Death

by tmb1112

Death is a Quirk that can only kill. A perfect Quirk for a villain, but what if the boy who manifested that power just wanted to be a hero? Enrolling in U.A. might not be enough when all your Quirk can do is kill people. Follow Zach Sazaki from his first day in Class A on a story that spans years, as he learns to be a hero, finds out more about his Quirk, and too much to summarize!

257. Chapter 257: The End

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 257 The End:

Yesterday…

"Master, kuh-akh, I'm here," a weak-sounding man kept his head raised while stepping up behind a figure facing the opposite direction in a cabin on the side of Mt. Fuji. The forest had a dark history and most people stayed far away from it in fear of wandering in and seeing something that most did not want to witness. The surrounding forest was empty, which the man who staggered inside knew well due to how cautious he had to be even this far from civilization. The man with spiky black hair was severely injured. He was panting as he entered into the cabin, but he caught his breath and forced himself to stand in a more respectful way as the man facing the other way as the front door lifted his head up at the sound of that voice in the doorway.

All For One turned his head sideways and glanced back towards the leader of the Radians. The most wanted man in Japan stepped forward in from the doorway that he closed behind him without touching. The door just swung shut as Intanzo ordered it to with his Matter Control. Intanzo wore his tattered villain costume, black and dark red, though some of the red on it was more just brick-colored from dried blood rather than designed to be red. Intanzo stepped forward but his right leg gave out below him on his next step, and he dropped to a knee. The villain bowed his head after hitting that knee and wincing from the pain he was in. "I have failed you, Master. Shigaraki Tomura, failed- but I as well," Intanzo squinted his eyes and ground his teeth. The urge to blame it on Shigaraki was overcome by his own shame in the pain he was in and the fact that he knelt here before his master, the only one left, in hiding with their organization destroyed. That much shame was hard to bear though, and he parted his grinding teeth and gasped, "Had it been me. Had you, chosen me, as your successor!"

Intanzo rose his gaze back up. All For One already turned back away from the kneeling man though. He was tinkering with something that Intanzo only just then noticed as All For One got back to it rather than speak to him. Intanzo looked past the man in his black costume who had no mask on, his face still with no eyes, just flat lips on the bottom half that had not frowned nor smiled to suggest what he was thinking. Intanzo fidgeted and wanted to say more, wanted to ask questions, but he stayed quiet as All For One reached his right hand forward and into a circular opening in the contraption before him. His arm slid into it up past his elbow, and then a locking noise clanked from inside it. "This is the last one," All For One spoke, his voice low and sounding regretful but at the same time detached.

While still facing away from his loyal subordinate, All For One spoke, "I gave Shigaraki the opportunity. The chance to carry out his plan before I…" All For One trailed off. He hummed as a rising bar of glowing yellow turned green on the side of the device his arm was stuck inside of. All For One pulled his arm out once it was full. "It's of no matter now. Shigaraki's plan- or, I suppose it was Raijin's, was doomed to failure. There was nothing you could have done."

"If- if I was your successor," Intanzo started. "If you would have given me the chance, I would-"

"You've never understood, Sotomaru," All For One interrupted.

Intanzo froze. His eyes bulged. His gaze lowered down and both eyes started shaking as that name echoed over and over in his head. "So-" CHHHHH! His brain hurt. Intanzo clenched his eyes shut and pulled his chin down into his chest. He reached a hand up to the side of his head, and he dropped to his other knee while his body hunched forward. His green eyes shot back open and focused on his arms below his elbows. Both of them that he had risen to his head were right in front of his eyes, and he stared at the scars on his inner forearms. "Soto…" Intanzo started mumbling in confusion. That name? Why, do I know that name?

All For One just continued while his loyal subordinate from the time he was a young boy contemplated what his Master meant by saying that name. "My 'successor' was never going to have his own will. It would have always been my own. I wanted you at my side. Not as my new, vessel." All For One shook his head and added, "But that became no issue. It all just, fell apart." All For One's lips curled down at the corners. He stepped towards Intanzo and up next to the man hunched over and feeling sick to his stomach as old memories long repressed started flooding into his head.

All For One's left hand lowered down on top of Intanzo's head. He patted it down a couple of times, and Intanzo clenched his eyes shut harder but also with his head pushing up into the gentle hand. The feeling reminded him of when he was ten years old and felt that same hand patting on his head like that. Master, Intanzo thought. All For One stopped patting his hand and just rubbed it back and forth through Intanzo's hair before curling it over the younger man's skull. "I appreciate that you came here. Back to this place. Where I told you that you could always come." All For One's subordinate gasped for breath and rose his glowing green eyes that lost the glow in them before he could even consider what was going on. All For One's curled hand on Intanzo's skull started to glow green itself, and then the device behind All For One in the dark became a lot more illuminated as the roof of the cabin broke apart in a flash of green. Sunlight shone down through the hole and cast light over the device. Ceiling boards ripped away and curled out above the strange contraption that blinked green for a different reason behind the criminal mastermind who grinned while lifting his glowing green hand up in front of his face.

"Wh-Why? Master?" Intanzo gasped out while collapsing to the floor in a cold sweat. "That's… mine," he whispered.

"It wasn't always," All For One reminded him. "I'm just taking it back. You were right, Sotomaru. You failed me. You all failed me. I am not disappointed, however. I expected as much. For a long time now, I believe I made a mistake. I allowed Shigaraki to play with that creature. The one I should have molded. The one I should have changed all of my plans around for."

"I'm disappointed in myself, my old apprentice, that I ignored his potential." All For One continued and shook his head in regret, "I ignored it solely because of personal reasons! Shigaraki Tomura is related to All Might's mentor. I let that get in the way. I allowed my desire to see All Might suffer in that knowledge, that it was Shimura's grandson committing these acts, prevent me from making the correct decisions."

"It is not your fault that things have gone this way," All For One told the man whose eyelids were fluttering shut. "I have only myself to blame. Or, to thank," he corrected himself. The corners of the mad villain's lips lifted back up. AFO grinned and turned back towards his device. "For now, I have committed to a new path. A new design. My past failures have led to this. One, final, success. Inescapable. An end to all things on Earth." All For One noticed the man behind him had collapsed unconscious. "I hope you will be awake in time to see it. Though, I doubt you will be…"

---

Present

"Mineta? Hey…" Asui shook the boy who she sat on her knees next to. Her head was bowed right over his, staring down at his face and the bloody trails coming out the corners of his eyes and down from his nostrils and both corners of his lips. His skin seemed to have turned gray, and the purple balls on his head had dimmed as if the color drained out of them. Tears dripped off her nose down onto his unmoving face. She blinked a few times in disbelief. Tsuyu lowered her head closer to his and pressed her forehead against his.

"Gah- ack, Tsu-chan. Please- p-please! Just one, kiss… ack- aghhugggh…" Until the last second, you were such an idiot. Tears spilled faster down Tsuyu's face when she closed her big eyes and squeezed them out. Asui lifted her head up and turned it to the right at the sound of fast footsteps approaching. She froze. Oh, her racing heart slowed down. Horror spread over her face and a new realization dawned on her. That's why it got quieter. She did not even notice why she had been able to hear those footsteps over what should have been other people screaming and choking and dying, like they were a minute ago.

The room had fallen very quiet though. Frisky Disky had cut the music before dying himself. He lay splayed out over the turntable that he had collapsed on top of. The dance floor was littered in bodies. Tables had fallen over and chairs were scattered everywhere with corpses laying next to them or over them. Tsuyu noticed a few twitching people, and one person who looked like they were crawling only to stop after she glanced their direction. One boy down on both knees with his head bowed finally collapsed forward, and Tsuyu flinched as she saw the blood splashing off of Koda's face on the other side of the room after he hit the ground face-first.

She turned her head and watched as three people sprinted outside with rage-filled expressions on their faces. There were a few others still in the room, like a crying older man in a similar suit as the three other Royal Guards who just charged out in fury and full of determination. "Sazaki! Get inside!"

"The Princess is… YOU!"

"ALL FOR ONE!"

Tsuyu flinched and snapped her head fully back to the open glass doors not far from where she was kneeling. A few others still inside who were in shock and horror at the deaths all around them heard that shout of pure rage outside. Toyo lowered down the Princess who Kirishima turned to from his gray-haired friend who he had been shaking himself. Neither Aya nor Tetsutetsu were moving anymore. Toyo and Kirishima both glared towards the doors, and the two of them stood up at the same time and started sprinting that way.

I need to get Sazaki back in here for the Princess. How are so many dead at once? And, why are we the ones who are not? Toyo grimaced deeper while staring out the doors and past heroes and his fellow guards towards a teenage boy down on both knees. He had heard the shout of the villain's name outside, but even hearing that, his eyes still locked onto that one student. Is it, those of us he's revived? Deku though! And others out there haven't been revived either! Not to my knowledge, at least, Toyo reminded himself, as it was a possibility that Deku, Bakugo, and Todoroki Shoto had just hidden the fact that they had been revived before from the press.

The four guards who rushed out of the Lodge were not the only ones at the building. Six others who had been on guard duty outside also moved in. Three of them approached on the roof of the Lodge at the edge above the balcony's doors, while three others came sprinting up the driveway and yelling at the villain just hovering in the air above all of them. Sirens continued to go off from the direction of Tokyo. More crashing sounds echoed through the night sky. Flashes from distant explosions of a world igniting illuminated the night. The ground rumbled as planes fell and hit the ground, or hit buildings, and cars slammed into each other or ran over collapsing pedestrians who could not even keep screaming as blood filled their mouths.

Ectoplasm's clones merged together into one man who grew larger and larger at the first floor of the building until his head rose past the second floor balcony. He grew even larger, rage filling his glowing white eyes after what he had just witnessed, and what he saw a glimpse of inside the glass doors of the balcony when his head was rising past it. "All For One. You fiend!"

"Lifebringer! Go save the Princess!"

"We'll fight him. You just revive!"

"It's… it's not working," Zach gasped out while holding his bare right hand on Yaoyorozu's neck. No one could hear his gasped-whisper that was more speaking to himself than responding to the others shouting at him.

"Zach! What's going on?! Is Yaoyorozu…" Midoriya couldn't finish the shout. He knew it was true already, but he was confused himself while watching Zach hold his hand so gently on Yaoyorozu's neck. Blood spilling down her chin got onto Zach's hand that trembled against her skin. The green-haired hero glared back up at All For One with his eyes shaking at the knowing smirk on the villain's face. "What did you do?" Midoriya hissed. "What did you do?!" Deku screamed up at the villain in anger.

"It won't work. None of them will be coming back," All For One replied. He lowered his expression down and Zach lifted his up. Zach stared up with soft and confused eyes. They were baffled, full of fear, and so lost.

Everyone who knew Zach could see it easily. He was a scary person when he wanted to be, and sometimes still when he wished he was not. His looks could range from cold and dark to straight-up terrifying. There was no look inciting fear in his eyes though. Not even a shred of a menacing persona to indicate some feeling of rage. The lack of anger, of a burning fury for what just happened, was understandable as well though.

Iida pulled his head back after taking one quick look down towards Zach from the villain he immediately snapped his gaze back up on. Why isn't it working? By the looks of who is out here, it seems it has something to do with Death. But there are those who don't fit with that! Why? Iida again noted Todoroki in his peripheral vision who remained standing, though there were trails of blood dripping down from his nostrils, and Iida saw that Shoto's hands were shaking too. Fear filled Iida at the expression on his friend's face that was barely keeping stoic, hiding the obvious pain Todoroki was in and the sensation that he was about to collapse on them.

"Bastard!"

"Kill him!"

All For One glanced up from the heroes below to the building's roof that three Royal Guards had gotten up on and charged ahead closer to where he floated. His right hand glowed green as they started to move. "Careful now," he warned. The roof underneath those guards shook, and all the supports holding it up snapped apart. The ceiling a meter away from all of their feet fell, and that left nothing holding up the roof where they were standing. All the walls of the second floor of the Lodge started folding in, and then hundreds of pounds of roof rubble pulled together into one giant spike that flew underneath All For One's feet and straight into the giant chest of the teacher behind him who AFO never turned to look at.

The Royal Guards fell into the collapsing roof. Deku wanted to attack, but he spun instead and shot in a flash of movement into the ballroom behind him with sparks coming off his body. He bounced around the crumbling debris and caught the Royal Guards about to get buried in the breaking building. Midoriya winced so much harder as he saw the bodies of his friends and classmates inside getting buried under falling ceiling, and he yelled at the people who were still alive in there, "Move!"

"That's, Intanzo's…" Bakugo growled with a bead of sweat dripping down his face. His lips were twitching and his palms sweating badly as he glared up at the villain who just showed off a very familiar Quirk to all of them.

"Intanzo will have just died like the rest of them," All For One commented while lowering his right hand back down. "A loyal subject until the end. His Quirk will be one of the few that I take with me. As well as Flight. Muscular's Muscle Augmentation," All For One snapped his left arm out to the side, and red muscles rippled out of his arm and covered it up as it grew ten times in size. Then it returned to normal, and the villain just showing off smugly remarked down towards a boy staring up in still so much confusion towards him, "As well as Dracula's. Or, Dracard's. Did you know that I took his, Sazaki?"

Zach's heart had already broken. It was hard for anything All For One could say to hurt him when the amount of pain he was in had already filled his heart to the brim. A tear still dropped from his left eye thought and slid down his face as he learned what had happened to a man Blackstar told him went missing a while ago. "There's something about Drac's Quirk that was vital for my plan. You see, he could survive without atmosphere. Without oxygen. It's part of the reason why he was able to live for so long. And I needed that, as I no longer see any reason to remain on this planet."

Debris exploded upwards behind most people out on the balcony. Midoriya shot out of it, and a few surprised survivors glanced around realizing they were alive and not buried as they were about to be. Kazumi and Sahara blinked a few times in shock, then they turned towards Deku who released Plucky who dropped right back to her knees again with tears pouring down her face at the horror she had just witnessed inside. The recently engaged couple who Deku saved like the Royal Guards from the roof just stared in disbelief at the world beyond their teacher. Ectoplasm was collapsing into a pile of ectoplasmic-goo behind All For One after a glowing spike of merged ceiling had spiraled around inside his giant form and broken his body apart, revealing the not-so-distant skyline of a burning Tokyo.

"It's all…" Kazumi whispered. "Everything…"

Sahara's legs felt like jelly and she collapsed to her knees. Tsuyu had made it out of the building right before the roof collapsed down behind her, making it so Deku did not have to save her as well, but she could not move unlike the boy with similarly green hair as hers who stomped back forward after dropping off all the people he saved. Deku marched forward with a look of righteous rage covering his face that shocked Tsuyu to see on his expression. Why keep fighting? Asui wondered before just closing her eyes and bowing her head in defeat. The last shred of her hope had faded when she saw Zach failing to revive Momo.

All Might had slumped against an edge of the balcony, his eyes shaking and full of water as he stared up at the villain who was clearly responsible for all of this. What have I done? Toshinori wondered. Regret overwhelmed and consumed the hero who only felt it all crush him even more as All For One started speaking again.

"It's not just this country," All For One informed those who were considering fighting him. The fact that he said 'country' and not 'city' was horrifying enough as it was. But as he went on, hope and the will to fight drained from most of their faces. "Every device was set to activate at the same time. All over the world. Equidistant from each other. Set to spray the particulate exactly far enough to have it cover as much area as possible while maintaining its lethality."

Trabo tried to split his body apart in order to fight. What's the point? He wondered. The boy whose date just died in his arms on the dance floor, surrounded by other people all collapsing and dying while he did not, dropped onto his butt in defeat. Trabo had run outside to get Zach's help even before the roof got dropped behind him. Dust flew out around him and made him squint his eyes even more in pain. They were already full of water though. Tears spilled down his face and he bowed his head in despair at the thought of what All For One just said.

He killed Dracula? "Hah, haha," Trabo laughed. He knew who All For One was referring to. I thought Zach was joking, Trabo curled the corners of his lips up, while tears flowed freely down his face. Mom, Dad, everyone, Trabo's lips pushed farther apart. His teeth chattered while he imagined what the rest of the world looked like right now. Everyone?! EVERYONE!

"Why are we still alive?" Kendo whispered in confusion. She was looking sideways towards Bakugo while asking it.

He noticed her staring in an uneasy way, and Bakugo sniffed in hard once at the feeling of a droplet of liquid under his right nostril. Kendo pulled her head back and grimaced deeper. It is then, Kendo understood at the sight of Bakugo clearly suffering from symptoms too. Other than those of us who were brought back, it's only the strongest who are still standing.

"It can't be everywhere," Iida declared firmly. He refused to believe what All For One just proclaimed. Midoriya's legs trembled below him though, because he already knew it. He and Bakugo had been warned about this exact situation they now found themselves in. Iida saw Midoriya's look of utter horror and he spun towards him, yelling louder, "That's not possible! He couldn't have!"

"Th-That's right," Trabo whispered under his breath. He rose his head up and pressed his palms down on the floor on either side of his butt. Coming to terms with the horrible reality was far too much for him. Accepting what Iida was saying was far easier. "He couldn't have-"

"About a month ago, I found myself in the ruins of a town," All For One announced. "A town where everyone had died. All at once." All For One's words struck a cord in the survivors who recognized exactly what he was referring to.

All For One thought back on that day himself. While everyone stared up towards the villain, he pictured himself floating through that town and looking around in awe at what he was seeing. Cars crashed into telephone lines. Houses on fire with no firefighters still alive to deal with it. Bodies just strewn on the sidewalks and on front lawns and in the middle of the road. People slumped halfway out of their vehicles like they had managed to get the doors open but could not take a full step out of them. Others just had their faces pressed up against the horns on their steering wheels that were still blaring honks through the air of the Arizona town.

"'What could have caused such devastation?' I asked myself," All For One wondered down to them. He smirked while imagining the sounds he heard that day different from the rest. "I followed the sound of crying. The boy's sobs led me straight to his school. His classroom, where he was surrounded by classmates and teachers who had all suddenly collapsed. Every last one of them had died when his Quirk manifested…"

Zach was right, Midoriya felt his heart breaking for that one little kid even as he stood with his own dead friends piled up behind him. He and Zach had talked about Gondorhan many times though. Even right after it had happened, Zach had had a theory that sounded so familiar to what All For One was explaining to them now.

Bakugo's heart was racing, though he knew the real reason his chest hurt was due to something else. His teeth chomped down hard, but his eyes also darted towards Zach at what All For One was telling them. Zach's head was just tilted up and his eyes sadly and sullenly watching the villain mocking them. For you, Bakugo thought for a second. Almost everyone he ever knew had just died. His parents among them. Yet he still bit down hard after taking one look at the face of despair Zach did not bother hiding. Who knew it was coming for so long…

"World-destroying Quirks. It didn't seem too far in the future when the principal asked me about it yesterday. But the chance of someone training that power is one in a million, and the chance of that person also being a villain, is also one in a million, so the chances of it ever happening like that are tiny." You told me about it years ago. I didn't listen to you. Who would listen to something like this?! "Yet it doesn't seem that far in the future if All For One gets out. Because it isn't about them training it, or them turning out to be a villain, when All For One could just take that power. An evil mastermind with the ability to steal powers. As long as he's still alive, I seriously think there's a chance he can destroy the world."

You were right. You've been right about everything. And even though you knew, you couldn't stop a God damned thing. Bakugo's fists curled in fury and regret of his own. Even though I knew! Even though you warned me- I didn't do anything either! Bakugo's arms from his elbows down had casts over them. The casts cracked and sparks pushed through those cracks. Explosions blasted from his skin covered in sweat as arms inside of casts were always very sweaty. The casts exploded and blood spilled from Bakugo's arms immediately. He ignored the pain though while smirking with a look of murderous intent towards the villain up above who darted his eyes onto the one hero whose glare cut off what he was saying about Gondorhan.

"You'll die for this," Bakugo snarled in a voice full of bloodlust. He slammed his palms down at his sides and blasted up in the air, then curled one behind him and the other in front. The initial explosion was not as large as it could be because of all the people around him. Once he was slightly over their heads though, he blasted another behind him much hotter and larger, then an even larger one out of his left hand in front of his body which shot him back diagonally towards All For One and below the wave of glowing green debris that flew towards where it looked like Bakugo was going to rocket up from at first.

Bakugo's left hand's Explosion pushed his arm slightly up, and he just fired a consecutive blast out of that arm and dropped below a section of the rubble that All For One managed to pull up quickly to adjust to Bakugo's flight pattern. Bakugo dropped below the enemy whose right leg the boy grabbed onto while flying past, and he swung down in front of him by blowing a chain of Explosions off the arm and spinning the both of them around and around into a tornado of fire. He released the villain with a massive Explosion into his body, but All For One's body became surrounded in a muscly mass as the Explosion was going off into him.

The villain soaring downwards in a protective coating of muscles just curled in his arm then shot back into the sky using his Flight ability. All For One's left arm glowed green and he swiped up at Bakugo, sending chunks of the Lodge flying up at the hero who pointed both hands forward and blew it all apart but got blasted back himself by his Explosions in front of him. He backflipped after flying backwards and kicked Explosions down below him that flipped him twenty feet upwards, and he pointed one hand behind him that sparked while the other was rising in front of his face.

The sparking hand pointed behind him was to blast him as fast as possible towards All For One, who his second hand was going to obliterate with an even larger Explosion. For the second time in a matter of weeks though, Bakugo got interrupted in the midst of what he considered the most important fight of his life at the time, and by the same man at that. All For One noticed it in the corner of his eyes at the final second.

"RaaAAAAAA! VILLAIN!" A voice of pure rage screamed in English.

All For One's body dispersed as a glowing white fist slammed into his back. The villain's black cloak seemed to wrap around him and then implode, and in All For One's place were a hundred black bats that spiraled around the man who just flew through him. Star-Spangled Man had come seemingly out of nowhere and plowed into All For One's back, just like he had interrupted Bakugo's fight weeks before with Zach Sazaki. Only he had at least managed to hit Lifebringer at the time. Here, Star-Spangled Man's enraged expression faltered for a second as he found himself surrounded in bats that flapped all around him and scratched at his face and eyes and limbs.

Star-Spangled Man's eyes glowed red, and he snapped his head to the right and sliced through five of the bats with a laser beam. A dim green glow came from some of the bats though, and as they spiraled around him too thick that it made a black veil around his whole body, Star-Spangled Man could not see the rising driveway that shot up into the mess and slammed into the American hero.

Bakugo flew forward and blasted a huge Explosion straight into where he imagined All For One would recollect himself after smashing the American hero away. All For One's human form was in the middle of reconstructing, when he saw the boy suddenly right in front of him as the chunks of pavement had finished passing in front of his face. All For One crossed his arms that started wrapping in Muscular's Quirk, but Bakugo's Explosion went off first and hit the villain who shot backwards in a cloud of smoke and fire this time without adequate protection.

"AAghh-FAAAAAuuugh-" Bakugo roared and reeled backwards after firing such a massive Explosion that his arms were in no way ready for after the damage they had taken days before. Tendons ripped apart and blood splashed out of his arms. His shoulders tore and both arms dropped to his sides as he failed to keep them lifted or even blast more Explosions to keep him in midair. The pain was so intense that it made him slam his bloodshot eyes shut, and he dropped out of the air with a trail of blood and smoke following after him.

"Kacchan!" Deku shot towards his friend and caught him right before Bakugo was going to hit the ground hard on his back.

"De-ku… kun, fight," Bakugo snarled while squinting his eyes back open and then struggling onto his feet out of his friend's arms.

Kirishima glared over towards where All For One had trailed out of the air in Bakugo's last attack. After seeing his friend was alright, he started sprinting over the balcony towards the side where All For One had dropped to their level after that last attack. He slowed down though as he noticed something all around the villain when AFO stopped falling. There were enough lights still on around the Lodge that it filled the air in the area with light. That light was reflecting off of something that Kirishima noticed and made him stop running. He lifted his right hand in front of him and stared confusedly at specks of what looked like ash falling on his palm.

Midoriya looked in awe and disbelief at the back of Bakugo's head as his friend marched with limp and bloody arms towards All For One who cleared the smokey air around him with a wave of a giant muscular red arm. "Why?" Midoriya whispered. "How?" What's the point of fighting anymore? How is Kacchan doing it? I don't, Midoriya's watery eyes spilled tears down his face. The weight of what had happened to the world, despite the fact that they knew beforehand that it was coming, was too much for him to bear. They had had warning, and they were the heroes who the world relied on, and they had failed.

Bakugo glared sideways and back at Deku who was hesitating too much. He ground his teeth then opened his mouth to snap at him, but he froze and his body hunched forward, "Ack- kuh… UAgh Ch-kacch!" Bakugo coughed up blood and spun back towards All For One who he glared at through blood-red eyes that actually started spilling blood now too.

Todoroki had watched Bakugo start fighting All For One in awe himself. It made him want to fight, but his steaming and smoking hands pulled back towards his face and he covered his mouth with them. "Aaghghuuggh-" Todoroki puked through his fingers while blood poured down from his nostrils much faster now.

"Todoroki!" Iida yelled out.

"Just like Death, it seems that more of my Plague is needed for certain strong individuals," All For One's voice boomed through the night.

Kirishima realized what the gray particles that were landing on him were. He spun on the balcony back towards Todoroki who Zach glanced over his shoulder at himself before just bowing his head again in defeat as Todoroki collapsed before Iida could catch him. Kirishima understood what that meant, and he heard another coughing fit down on the ground level where the driveway had been all ripped up but where Midoriya had caught his friend as he fell. Kirishima ran to the railing and slammed his hands down on it, leaning over and yelling in fear, "BAKUGO!"

Bakugo dropped down to one knee, and Midoriya stepped towards him only to wobble and have to stop as he realized that the increased density of the particles was affecting him too. "Even One For All cannot compare," All For One mentioned after observing Midoriya's wobbly step there. "Amazing."

"Of course, it's not only the strong who get to survive this, for a time," All For One added. He glared up towards Star-Spangled Man who hovered down himself and was taking heavy breaths but focusing more this time on a planned attack rather than just rushing his enemy in rage. The American's eyes continued to glow red, and he himself was not faltering unlike some of the others. He did dart a concerned and then saddened look towards the strong Japanese boys who were suffering from this monster's stolen Quirk though.

Outside of Tokyo and on their way towards the Kaio Springs Lodge, several heroes stopped and yelled out the names of their comrades. As the invisible particulate became visible because of its condensed spray directly away from All For One's body, the red feathers carrying many heroes with Hawks dropped out of the air. The young hero himself was spinning out with his eyes rolling back into his head.

"Ha-wks- ack, agh, kah," Endeavor's flames sputtered. He dropped out of the air and slammed a fist into the pavement below him that he dragged a trench through.

"Endeavor-san!"

"Oh God, if even Endeavor…"

"It's not affecting those of us who have been revived! It… it must be Lifebringer!"

"No way! It's just that our bodies have changed to not be affected by it! No way Lifebringer's doing this!"

"NO CHANCE!"

"We have to get to that Lodge though!"

"Sho-to…" Endeavor lifted his head and looked off into the distance where he had been rushing to get to his son, and to find Lifebringer who they needed to save them now. Endeavor tried to push off his fist, but he spotted tiny gray specks floating down in front of his face. His eyes bled and his vision became blurrier. The top hero in the country collapsed down onto his face. His heart slowed down even more.

"Damn…" Bakugo whispered. His body was ignoring every order he gave it. He heard a dull voice screaming towards him, and he spotted Kirishima looking blurry in his peripheral vision yelling down from the balcony and then jumping off to sprint on ground level towards his best friend. Bakugo glared up towards All For One though. His eyes focused solely on the villain who had sprayed more Plague out to kill the stronger ones among them, and who faced down towards Bakugo with his lips flattening out from his curled-up smirk at the sight of Bakugo's expression.

Even as blood poured from his eyes and nostrils. As his arms dangled from his sides. Bakugo Katsuki's legs shook violently and then started moving again. His knees rose off the ground. His body rose to his feet… and then he leaned back too much as he stood, and he fell backwards.

Midoriya reached a hand for his friend. Bakugo fell back-first though, landing flat on his back and facing up towards the sky. "Bakugo!" Kirishima ran up to his friend's side and knelt next to him, shaking him around while the blond boy did not move.

The sight of his unresponsive friend laying in front of him snapped Deku back to reality. To the reality that this was all really happening. It made Deku's fists curl in anger, but his face just scrunched up more in confusion. "How?" Midoriya whispered. "How could it- why, doesn't it affect them?" Midoriya could not move from his place. He was worried that taking a step would fail. He could see the gray particulate of this Plague Quirk, and after asking the question he tried to hold his breath and refuse to breathe for as long as he could in case the next breath would bring in too much of that poisonous ash.

"Lifebringer. Lifebringer please! We need you to get to the Princess. T-to at least try! Please, come with…"

The man grabbing Lifebringer's shoulder removed his hand. The boy kneeling there was looking back down at the girl still in his arms. She lay over his legs, and he stared down at her and the blood on her face. Her hair was splayed out around her head looking messy. Her eyes were still partially open. Zach looked down into Momo's eyes and held her tighter. I can't, Zach thought. He curled his chin down into his chest and his next breath turned into a wheeze. I can't. His squinting eyes made it harder to see Momo's face. The blurry face he was looking at could have been anyone's.

Maelstrom. Kaminari, Zach thought of them. Cee, Hyper… Zach's chest ripped inside. His body hurt so much. His insides were in so much pain, but the thought of maybe turning all his organs into Death made him imagine a conversation he had just had with Yaoyorozu. I told her I wouldn't do that anymore. Tears poured down his face. I promised. She loved me too. She said she loves me, and it killed her? What is that? What even is that?! Zach's teeth clenched harder. His whole body trembled. Why? Am I really, cursed? Are you serious? What the Hell? What the actual fuck is this?!

It happens every, single, time. I can't win. I can't- so why bother? Why even try? Everything. Everything we did, and the world ended anyway. It was all for nothing! "Ahhhh… AhhAAhhhHAAAA! AHHHH!" Zach sobbed and slammed his head down. His eyes clenched shut and he screamed in agony. None of it mattered! Nothing I ever did. All those horrible things for a lasting peace? A peace in what world?! Zach sobbed in despair.

Kazumi held Sahara tight and turned away once he heard Lifebringer screaming like that. "It's okay," he whispered to his fiancé who started sobbing so much harder when they heard Lifebringer crying. The defeated tone of Lifebringer's wails of despair was something that crushed Kazumi to hear though. Even Lifebringer knows it. He can come back from anything. No matter how bad it gets, he always finds a way. But… not this time. Kazumi just held the girl he loved in his arms. It was their one consolation in a world that they knew had just died. This time, it's over.

I can't accept that, Zach! Iida bared his teeth and got back up from the knee he was on next to Todoroki's body. He glanced to Zach but quickly turned away then sprinted forward. But, I cannot even try, to get you to stand with me, Iida's eyes spilled tears while he jumped off the balcony to go join Kirishima and Midoriya down on the ground level.

Kendo shook her head around and sprinted forward. "We have to try," she whispered. Her hands turned large and grabbed onto the railing of the balcony that she tossed herself over.

"Midoriya Izuku," All For One called down to the boy who remained standing. All Might had gotten up and ran to the balcony's railing, and he was staring down towards his successor in fear. All of the other survivors who had gone to join in the fight turned as well towards one of them who still stood despite never having been revived before. The fact that Deku remained on his feet was amazing, and yet they all just felt crushed when they looked his way and saw a trail of blood coming down from his left nostril and running over his lips.

"You will not survive this," All For One continued. "This world I abandon will have survivors. I wonder what they will eat? Unless Sazaki has revived crops before that would not have been affected by Plague either, the survivors will become very hungry before long at all. Hahaha," All For One's deep laughter haunted the people who he was referring to. "On an empty, dead planet. The only ones still alive are those who Sazaki revived. Something I suspected would happen. After all, there was one man walking around the streets of Gondorhan. So confused as to why everyone else around him had died, while he alone remained standing."

"I figured out what made him different," All For One remarked. "The one thing that separated him from all of the others in that town, was that he had been killed before. Revived during one of Sazaki's trips to America. In that small town in Arizona so full of devastation, one man survived. Even the child would succumb to his own power, once it had been taken from him and I used it for the first time. When I carried out my promise to him, to 'make the nightmare end.'"

Zach winced. Even here at the end, he still imagined that little boy for a moment. Cursed. All of us. How must he have died? Did he know it was his own Quirk? I can only hope, All For One didn't explain… He probably did. Why wouldn't he? To die so horribly? Like this. Everyone in the world. Billions of people. He killed them all, and I can't revive even one person! Zach held his right hand on Momo's back and curled it into her dress. Not even you.

"That boy was responsible for one of the most heinous acts I have ever witnessed. His Quirk killed everyone. Over 14,000 dead, instantly. Devastation on a scale of that level, on accident?" All For One questioned, sounding like he was repeating a thought process he had pictured before. "Imagine what it can do in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. With such a power," he smirked at his horrified enemies and finished, "they could destroy the world."

Deku ground his teeth but continued to hold his voice back. Don't breathe, he thought to himself. I need to stop him from releasing any more. I cannot assume that he is telling the truth about everything! There are people left. More survivors than just this. There have to be! Deku's legs bent. The muscles on his legs tensed. His suit could not handle it. From his thighs down to his shoes, the fabric of his pants shredded apart. His feet broke free from the fancy shoes that shredded then tore even thinner as Midoriya's toes curled into the cracking ground underneath him.

All For One's left arm started to wrap in Muscular's Quirk, and Midoriya vanished. So fast! Even the experienced villain alive for well over a hundred years could not properly track the hero whose speed was something beyond anything he had ever seen from All Might. Midoriya flew up on All For One's left side where the villain continued wrapping his Quirk around even thicker for defense while his other arm started glowing green.

In a blur, Midoriya moved around the villain's other side while All For One was still turning to his left. Deku slammed his right fist into All For One's right side. Deku opened his fist and Blackwhips shot out of every one of his fingers. He Floated in place and his body yanked forward as All For One jolted at the full length of his Blackwhips without breaking them apart. Midoriya yanked back towards himself then kicked both of his legs out in front of him, this time into a huge protective mass of Muscles that All For One put in front of his body. Those Muscles protected him but could not stop him from getting launched backwards.

The top American hero slammed into All For One's back and tackled the villain out of the air. He fired beams of red into the villain's back while holding him tightly. Midoriya yelled down, "Star-Spangled Man! Move!" Deku pulled his right arm back and the right side of his suit jacket ripped apart. Finish this quickly! He had no breath left after yelling his warning to the American.

All For One's body started breaking apart into bats again to escape the American's hold. Star-Spangled Man flew backwards though as he saw Deku twisting his body upwards. "Pull back!" Star-Spangled Man yelled at the other heroes around him.

Ectoplasm picked up Bakugo Katsuki's body and leapt away. Kirishima Hardened and crossed his arms in front of his face, while Iida sped to Kendo and grabbed her before moving as fast as possible to escape. Some of the quicker bats that All For One had broken apart into flew after Star-Spangled Man who it was clear that Deku was going to try and avoid hitting here thanks to his warning. A pair of red beams flew at those bats though and made them pull backwards. It was not the American hero who shot them this time, but the Head Guard of the dead Princess who had tears spilling from the very red eyes that Toyo just shot powerful beams out of.

SMASH! Deku did not risk yelling it and breathing in more poisoned air. He clenched his teeth as hard as he could, and blood sprayed between his clenched teeth which made him bite even harder while finishing his punch. The moment he felt the blood push up his throat though in the cough that forced the blood through the cracks in his teeth, his whole body flinched. His arm in mid-swing lost some of the power.

All the bats slammed back into the ground. The black swirling mass around All For One turned back into a man pancaked on the driveway. Four red beams fired down at him, but his body wrapped in Muscle Augmentation and then glowed green. The solid floor around him turned into a fluid whirlpool and then wrapped up over his body. The stone fountain broke apart and flew up in a hundred tiny shards at Deku who coughed up blood and barely managed to cross his arms to protect himself in time.

"Unbreakable!" Kirishima slammed a fist into a wall of pavement lifted up between the villain and them.

Iida sprinted back and swung Kendo forward who did a spin in midair while putting both of her fists together. "Kirishima!" Kirishima ducked as she called out his name, and she smashed both of her fists into the cracked part of the wall that shattered inwards towards All For One, who already had dozens of spikes of Earth lifted up around him glowing green for a counterattack. Deku's squinted eyes opened back up even as stone shards flew by him and sliced him several times. He pulled his right leg back, and he kicked down between his friends suddenly faced with the villain's prepared attack, and All For One himself.

Midoriya kicked down in time. All the flying projectiles slammed into the ground rather than his friends who got blown backwards by the force of his kick instead. All For One himself was smashed back down to a knee again, though his right arm was extending and growing huge with red muscles that he swung upward while Deku was flipping around in descent towards him.

Midoriya's squinted eyes focused on the villain punching towards him. Last chance! Deku pulled his left arm back this time. It still felt weird. He was not used to the prosthetic, but he filled it with One For All and did not break the arm apart even as the sleeve remaining around it did shred. He had already been breathing in too much in the last twenty seconds to care now. "SMASH!" Deku screamed, holding nothing back as he slammed his fist into the end of All For One's huge muscular arm.

The two of them punched into each other and the wind from their collision pushed everyone even farther away. Those too close squinted and pulled away from the two as the force slammed into them. Deku's fist glowed brighter though. Blood sprayed out of his mouth and spilled faster down from his nose. He looked to falter for a second, and then his eyes flashed white and his veins all rippled. Deku smashed his fist farther forward and broke apart the Muscle Augmentation of the villain who leaned backwards in shock that Deku still had that much strength even as Plague tore apart his insides.

Deku's fist knocked away All For One's tearing red arm of muscles. It slammed into All For One's face and knocked the villain's head to the side while denting into his mouth and just above where there was only scarred tissue instead of eyes or a nose. Blood splashed out of All For One's mouth too as Deku pushed all of his weight and force into the swing. The villain flew off the punch and smashed into the driveway that exploded up and away from him. He bounced through the grass and dug a trench before bouncing into a steel fence at the end of the property that ripped up and pulled out of the ground.

Midoriya dropped onto his elbows and knees. He put his hands down on the floor and shook his head back and forth. Come on, Deku yelled at himself. Even the voice in his head was quieter now though as he tried to collect his thoughts. In his mind's eye that was clearer than his external vision which was nothing but a blur now, Midoriya swore he could see a group of people in front of him. Why, are you all looking at me like that? Midoriya's hazy eyes spilled tears that quickly turned red while his arms and legs shook. It's not good enough. I failed you! It's not time, Midoriya thought back at the accepting looks that were free of putting any guilt on him for this. He denied those expressions and tried to pull away, but an older woman in front of him with black hair tied into a ponytail reached out.

Deku had turned his back to them in his own head. He was looking away, but he glanced to his shoulder where her hand was holding him back. Please. I need… I need to keep fighting. I can't… That hand pulled back on him. His struggle did nothing. Both outside where his arms had finally buckled, and inside his own head where he turned to the woman next to him who had a flapping white cape behind her, his tears cried red. The red streaks from his eyes dripped off his chin, and the hero wheezing for breath collapsed down onto his chest.

His head turned sideways on a broken-up driveway outside of the Kaio Springs Lodge. All For One had been Smashed away, and he had not come back yet so no one knew if Midoriya's punch had done enough or if it only had the villain down for a moment. Those close enough ran to Deku's sides though and tried to shake him and get him back up. "Come on, Midoriya!" Kirishima yelled at his friend who had not even been hit that hard by All For One but was barely moving anymore. "You can fight it! You're strong enough!"

"That's right!" Iida yelled in agreement. "Get back up! We believe in you!"

Zach lowered Yaoyorozu down to the floor in front of his knees. His shaking hands moved to the sides of him and pushed down, and he struggled back up onto unsteady legs that he staggered forward on. Zach got to the railing, and he looked down at All Might who was climbing down in a precarious way but dropped to the black grass below then started running towards his student whose name he yelled out the name of.

Ka-CRSSHH! The loud sound of something crashing in the distance had come too long after All For One got sent flying that direction. It was a new crash, not aftermath from Midoriya's attack but from someone still moving over there. Those around Deku moved between him and the one they imagined would be coming back for revenge against him.

They readied themselves, preparing for the next attack from a man who had somehow been able to survive Deku's most powerful last punch. Zach turned his head to the right. He looked away from his friends and teachers and glared towards the enemy who his heart started to burn with hatred for. Angry! Fight! Zach's fists started to smoke black and curled onto the top of the railing in front of him.

"Young Midoriya!"

"Midoriya!"

"Midoriya!"

Star-Spangled Man floated forward to get between the approaching villain and the U.A. students and faculty. The American was infuriated, but he felt more confident too now at the sight of who just got up and stood at the edge of the balcony glaring towards All For One too.

"What a strong punch. Incredible, considering it was your last." All For One's voice boomed through the night. He floated back with a huge bruise on the wrinkled skin above his smirking mouth that had a trail of blood dripping down the right corner. "And with you, One For All, finally…"

Zach's eyes shifted back towards his friend laying on his chest with his head tilted sideways. Midoriya Izuku's face was turned his direction, so Zach could see right into his eyes between the others around him who were still screaming out his name. He felt it though. It was not what All For One was saying that made Zach turn back. His own heart skipped a beat. Death, Zach thought. He could see straight into Midoriya's unmoving half-opened eyes, crying blood in a puddle on the floor below his face. The black wisps coming out the backs of Zach's hands faded away.

His hands dropped from the railing. His arms fell limp to his sides and he took a step backwards. Zach failed at planting his foot, and he just fell hard back onto his butt. "Midoriya," Zach whispered. His hands at his sides slid over the floor, and he felt his right brush against something behind him that he recoiled away from as he knew what he just felt. "Momo," his voice cracked.

Zach's legs pulled back towards his torso. He crossed his arms for a second when he recoiled away from the corpse behind his back, but his hands fell limply again down into his lap this time. Zach slid his feet up right in front of his stomach while slouching forward over the top of his knees. He stared down unmoving as the shouts of his friend's name turned into screams of grief and more fury at All For One.

"Lifebringer! We need your-" Star-Spangled Man started yelling after watching that teenager collapse.

All For One flew at the American hero who shot out of the way using his own ability of flight. All For One's left arm turned all muscular and curved after him, and then the arm itself glowed dark green as the villain used Intanzo's Quirk on his own body. The "Inorganic" Matter Control could still work on his own biological mass, and the flesh of his huge muscular left arm ripped away like a whole extra arm that curled around Star-Spangled Man's torso and then whipped him down at the ground.

"We need to stop him!"

"All For One!"

"WHY?! Just stop already!" Kendo screamed up in frustration at their enemy. "What do you get from this? Just stop!" She picked up chunks of broken driveway using her massive hands and launched them up at All For One before he could dive down and get a follow-up attack on Star-Spangled Man while he was down.

Star-Spangled Man quickly pushed himself back up. He glared into the air above him where the villain dodged one chunk of debris and smashed another apart. All For One was not facing back towards the American he was diving at though. He was smirking towards All Might who held his young apprentice in his arms and cried over Midoriya's death. "It was your fault, Toshinori," All For One mocked, while his Muscle-Augmented right arm bulged three times in size. The ground pre-cracked in all directions from where he was about to smash down. Green glows came out of the cracks, and the force that All For One was putting into this swing was going to annihilate the entire property.

He spun his head and stopped short, swinging his arm instead at a woman who shot in out of nowhere and still managed to spin herself away from the huge arm and the force it sent off after her. "Now! Ryukyu!" Sky-Girl screamed. The red lines coming out of her body flashed brighter as she sped up away from All For One's attack and made him spin after her to try and track her dodge to get off the attack into her still. He snapped his head back the other way after hearing what Sky-Girl shouted.

Ryukyu shot through the air and slammed two huge claws into All For One. "Let go! Pull left!" Roady screamed on top of his boss's head, looking enraged still after the death of his wife Popfire that he had just witnessed.

"Ectoplasm! Split apart again and organize your students!" Ragdoll yelled down at the teacher who after Deku's death started standing still while finally processing the idea that the entire world had fallen apart.

Kendo wiped her eyes with a sleeve and glanced up towards the balcony where she had seen Zach stepping up a minute ago. Why do we still fight? We have to. Vengeance? Justice? For the world to follow? Tears spilled down her face even after she tried wiping them away. She glared back at All For One who missed a swipe at Ryukyu as Ragdoll and Roady helped on her back with their support-type Quirks.

"Not so fast," All For One mocked, his voice coming out of his head even though his body had broken apart into a swirling black tornado that looked like flapping mist. His head spun 180 degrees and he looked back into Star-Spangled Man's eyes, only for the American to be looking above them while already flying farther back himself.

Even in the dark, All For One saw that shade dropping over him and snapped his head up too. He flew backwards, but Mt. Lady's foot was too large and stomped onto the villain she slammed down into the driveway and plowed through one of the pre-made cracks so her right leg buried halfway up her shin before jolting to a stop. "Lifebringer! Where are you? The whole city is…" Mt. Lady looked around for him and spotted the teenager sitting motionlessly on the balcony in a way that she actually thought he was a corpse too at first look at him. "Lifebringer! HEY- whoa!" Mt. Lady flew backwards and threw her arms behind her to catch herself as she was suddenly launched away by the villain's strength.

"Get him!"

"We have to stop him!"

"Where's Lifebringer?!"

"His Quirk isn't working to revive them!"

"Oh God…"

"That is right. All of your efforts are in vain. Try. Try to defeat me! Try to avenge your dead planet!" All For One taunted his enemies surrounding him now on all sides. "I do not believe this is the only intelligent world in our galaxy. I saw everything the Earth had to offer. Now, I will move on. And those revived will be the few survivors. Left to attempt to rebuild a world with no society. No agriculture. As few as you as there are, you'll starve before long. Or maybe not. Perhaps, one day, I will return to this world and find a beautiful new civilization…"

"For me to destroy," he finished in a horrifying tone to the despairing people who screamed out and attacked him again.

Back on the balcony, Sahara pulled out of Kazumi's arms weakly and started curling her fists. "Shouldn't we… help?"

Kazumi looked softly to the side of her head and she stared back at him after a second. Her eyes widened and then she just leaned back and put her arms back around her boyfriend looking more vulnerable than her right now. "Okay," she whispered back at him. "That's fine. We don't have to."

"Plucky! Help me out!" Sky-Girl yelled down at her best friend who stared up in shock for a few seconds before shaking her head around and jumping up to her feet. The sight of Sky-Girl still fighting sparked something in the heroine who sprung to action and sprinted forward, right past Lifebringer who she glanced quickly at. She just bit her tongue and jumped off the balcony without saying a thing to him.

Zach Sazaki sat with his head bowed and his body still. He was as still as a corpse. Watching Yaoyorozu and Midoriya die, was just… too much for him. The sounds of everyone else fighting faded away around him.

It was an odd quiet. The planes had already crashed. His eyes were open and he stared down into the darkness of his lap under his unmoving hands. Flames around Tokyo illuminated the edges of his vision. Green and red hues occasionally flashed, but he was not processing which hero or villain was the source of them. Even his thoughts were quiet. He heard his own breathing in his ears. Rebel said lots of cities. It got into planes. It spread everywhere. So high in the sky. Everyone. All dead. So much death.

Iida flew backwards from the shockwave of a blow between Star-Spangled Man and All For One which prevented him from getting any closer to them. Only Kirishima had managed to stay close up as he dug his legs down harder into the ground and kept himself in place. "Zach!" Iida yelled over towards the railing bars that he looked between to see his friend's bowed head. "Get up!" You may be the only one who has a chance. "ZACH!"

"Enough, young Ingenium," All For One told Class A's class representative who spun back to the villain who just called him by his chosen hero name. Hearing that name only made him think of his brother though, his brother who had never been revived before which meant that he was dead somewhere. Just like his parents. Iida's eyes spilled tears even more as All For One told him, "Lifebringer knows there's no point in fighting anymore. I saw it when he tried reviving Yaoyorozu Momo. My suspicions were confirmed."

Zach could faintly hear All For One's voice. Nothing he said mattered anymore though. The world is over. Who cares?

"The boy in Gondorhan who developed such an apocalyptic Quirk only failed to kill the one person in the town who had been brought back to life in the past. I made sure that his death appeared to be the same as the rest. No one else would find the difference in his corpse compared to all the others, as the secret would have been revealed too soon." All For One smirked around at his infuriated and distraught enemies still wrapping their minds around the true end of the world that they found themselves in right now. "None could tell that he was not killed by the Quirk I simply call, Plague."

"But!" He continued loudly in a shout. "If it was true that Plague could not kill those revived by Death, then it acted in the same way that Death did in how Sazaki's Quirk also does not work on those already revived, or on those who were killed by Death themselves. Which begged the question: If their Quirks had the same kind of killing energy, then would Lifebringer even be able to revive those killed with Plague? I came here to see for myself," All For One glanced over once more at the knelt form of Lifebringer who did not react in the least to anything he said. "I cannot say that I am surprised by the outcome."

"Hey Zach! You've got to get up!" Roady yelled towards the lodge.

"He won't. Watch," All For One curled his right hand from up in the air above his enemies encircling him. His hand glowed green, and a green glow illuminated under the balcony.

"Stop!"

"GET HIM!"

The heroes attacked again. The support beams holding up the balcony broke into splinters below the deck. The villain destabilized the atoms of the wooden planks and metal beams. Kirisihima started sprinting towards the balcony while yelling at the few still up there to hold on, but All For One grabbed Ryukyu by her long neck at that same moment and threw the Dragoon Hero rushing in too haphazardly into the ground just behind Kirishima.

Roady and Ragdoll went flying different directions. Kirishima was hit by a huge chunk of earth and launched below the collapsing deck straight into the first floor of a building that destabilized even more than it already had with the second floor breaking apart. The whole building shook and fell. Kazumi and Sahara finally got up and ran to jump off the balcony in time. "Lifebring-" Sahara started calling out as they ran past.

Kazumi held her firmly by the hand and leapt without waiting as they had no time to stop and pick Lifebringer up too.

The balcony collapsed down to the ground. Zach felt a body behind him slide into his back, and he gasped out a breath with spit in it at the feeling of her limp form touching him. They collapsed on such an angle that Momo's body slid around his left side and then past his legs before shards of glass and broken wall chunks fell on top of it. Zach just sat still as the world started breaking apart around him.

Dust rose up. Screams rang out. His eyes closed. "Ahhh," he breathed out again in nothing but pain.

"RAAAA!" Sato smashed up out of the rubble behind Zach on his left and ran out towards All For One.

Most of the heroes joined in the fight. One girl did not. She climbed back over a pile of rubble and pushed aside some planks in her path. Tsuyu's arms were bent at her sides with her forearms sticking out in front of her in her usual way. Her dress was ripped at bottom. Asui Tsuyu stared down at the boy sitting in front of her. Her gaze shifted back to the fight for a moment, but her head bowed as she saw no reason to go out and fight with the others. Stop him? Don't stop him? What's the difference? What would fighting do?

She could find no motivation for it. She took small careful steps back towards Zach over precarious footing. The section of balcony floor directly under him had stayed intact, partly due to how Intanzo's Quirk could not mess with matter directly touching an individual other than himself. All For One left the wooden floor around Zach untouched, and it had not broken apart when it dropped with the collapsing deck.

Tsuyu walked over to that untouched section of balcony. She stared past Zach's feet to a few pieces of rubble that did not do much to cover up Yaoyorozu's body, leaving her face clear to her friend and floormate for the past three years. Asui closed her eyes tightly shut at the sight of her friend's gray lifeless face. Then she opened her eyes back up and looked at the boy on her left side she had walked up to. Tsuyu's head tilted back. The sky was dark. Red light reflected off the thick rain of ashy gray particles. Fire rose in all directions and bodies of their friends stuck out of the rubble all around them. All Tsuyu could focus on though was the boy she found herself standing next to at the end of the world.

She sat down next to him. Tsuyu put her hands on the floor carefully and lowered herself to her butt just on his right side. He did not move an inch to acknowledge her presence. She did not know if he even noticed she was there. Tsuyu's left hand lifted up slowly. Her lips quivered but she kept moving it and touched his right shoulder. Instantly she flinched off it, and she glanced the other direction in shame before just dropping both arms back down. They were bent at the elbows with her lower arms sticking out in front of her for a second or two, before also dropping down into her lap. Why pretend? Tsuyu thought instead of keeping a comforting hand there for him.

Her eyes closed and she sniffled in once. Pretend? Her eyelids scrunched up as she squinted her big eyes closed even harder. What do I say to him? I- I haven't talked to Zach one-on-one since he came back. I've ignored him. Tears spilled out of Tsuyu's closed eyes. She cried for the end of the world, but also in regret. "I'm sorry, Zach-chan," Tsuyu whispered.

Gentle. Exodus. Snow, Zach seethed a breath of pain between his teeth in agony at the thought of that little girl's face. He imagined it in the same state that Momo's was in, and although it was difficult for him to feel any more pain than he was already in, that thought was still able to make it all somehow even worse.

All of the survivors just lost everyone they love too. Their families wiped out. A human race of a few thousand can't survive. They'll starve. Everyone will. The world is over. It ended. The world I loved. There's no hope for it at all…

"…I should have tried harder, when you returned," Tsuyu continued in a soft whisper to the boy who was in too much despair lost in his own dark thoughts to focus on her. She had tear streaks running down her face and could not tell if he was hearing a word she was saying, but she kept going anyway. It was easier to say these things with the possibility that he could not even hear her voice. In a weak and shaky tone, the frog girl whispered to her classmate, "I was so, confused. When you came back. I didn't know what to do. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Zach-chan."

"I knew it wasn't you anymore when I saw you in the hospital, but," her lips pursed and she clenched her eyes shut in so much painful regret. "But I was wrong," she gasped out. "I was wrong. I was wrong. I was wrong." Tears flowed freely down her face. "I didn't know for sure, until I saw you at the dance tonight. Walking in with Midoriya-chan and Kirishima-chan. I- I- I knew, I knew it was you. It was always… ahh," Tsuyu struggled to keep speaking.

"I mourned you, Zach-chan. I cried every night. After school, in the shower, in my bed," Tsuyu shook her head back and forth while tears continued to spill down her face. "I know that's why I couldn't believe it before tonight. You, saved my life. You were my hero. You brought me back despite how much it hurt you…" her voice caught in her throat and she croaked. "Gero-ack, agh," She coughed up her voice after croaking unintentionally as she was too choked up to continued. Finally, she managed to gasp out with her head tilting back, "And it drove you mad."

"And I blamed myself," she whispered so hoarsely she barely heard it herself. "I opened my eyes that day, and I saw what you looked like. Sitting over me. Engulfed in Death. Laughing in so, so much pain… I could feel it. Somehow, I felt it coming off of you. How much it hurt," she bit down on her bottom lip that was shaking too much, as if she was catching it to stop it from trembling anymore. Her big eyes watered even more as she opened them up wider and stared at the boy next to her who continued to stare down in his lap, though she noticed his eyes were open slightly more than the last time she looked. He hears me, Tsuyu thought at just the sight of those eyes looking awake enough that he could surely hear her voice which she was unsure of until that moment.

A part of her hesitated when she realized that she was not just confessing these things for herself. She was saying it to him, but she only paused for a brief moment after seeing that he could hear every word she had said. "So I didn't believe it," Tsuyu admitted softly. "I knew it was my fault, every time I'd think back to opening my eyes and seeing you there laughing in madness. Every time I remembered that feeling radiating from your body. So I knew when I saw you in the hospital that you weren't really back. I knew- I, I told myself that I knew, because that would make it so I didn't have to mourn again."

"And at the joint training! When you said you didn't hate Kaminari, that you didn't want revenge? I thought that confirmed it even more. You were someone else. But really, you had just grown. Matured- you had become a better person, while I!" Tsuyu's voice cracked as soon as she rose it slightly louder in disbelief at her own past actions. "It was easier for me to pretend like you were someone else rather than accept it. Because it was hard. It was so hard to get over it the first time. I was scared, that you would leave again. I didn't want to go through that again!"

"It had been enough time that I already got over it once. It took me a really, really long time, Zach-chan. I couldn't accept… I didn't want to! And so I- I ignored you, all this time!" Tsuyu sobbed and stared back into the wide eyes of the boy who had turned his head towards her now and was looking back at Tsuyu who he had felt so far away from the entire time he had been back. The distance between them felt farther than ever just by the way she referred to him as 'Zach' these days, and yet she had called him 'Zach-chan' half a dozen times in this one rant already.

"But, I think the reason I couldn't accept it," Tsuyu continued more thoughtfully while squinting her eyes back at Zach again. "More than anything, I just couldn't accept that you were back or it would be like, accepting that I didn't need to feel so much guilt-" she gasped at the boy who tensed up as she admitted those thoughts to him. They were thoughts she had not even collected herself enough until this moment that she spoke them aloud to the very person she felt she had done wrong to by allowing herself to run with those thoughts. "And, it was all my fault that you went insane. My fault that you left that day! I wanted to get past it and still be a hero, and I found a way to, despite it all! I, I became a hero while holding that regret tightly- and I didn't understand. I- I couldn't adjust, to the idea that you weren't gone."

"Because if you were really here, then your suffering hadn't ended? You weren't dead," Tsuyu continued in a raspy voice that cracked as she said it. "And that meant that the person I was seeing- who I could see still suffering so much- was my friend? I didn't want to accept it." Her eyes closed and her head shook around. "I refused to even when everyone else did. I couldn't say anything about it, but I knew. I knew how much you were hurting. And so even though I felt bad for this Zach who had returned to Japan, it- it didn't crush me as much when I wouldn't believe that you were my friend… ahhh, and I'm sorry. I'm sorry I haven't been there for you! I'm sorry I abandoned you. That I didn't come to your room years ago after I saw you lose it reviving me- I knew it!"

Tsuyu's voice finally rose louder as she exclaimed that with her eyes snapping open and full of more intense regret and guilt than Zach had ever noticed in her eyes before. It's always been there though, Zach thought, feeling a twinge of guilt through all his other emotions at the moment that he had never noticed Tsuyu feeling this way.

"I knew how much it hurt you to save me, and you did it- and I let you go!" She exclaimed, years of guilt finally bursting out all at once in public as she had never allowed before. She sobbed while telling him this. "I thought they were all just pretending at first. That they just didn't want to see what I did, when it was so obvious to me that you weren't the same Zach, but I was the one who didn't see the truth! I- I saw you come into the dance, and I cried, because I knew in that moment that it was really you. The same person I saw over my body screaming, and crying, and laughing all at once while you revived me."

"You who killed Kaminari-chan not out of hate but love!" She exclaimed. "Who we all love so much. Who I love," she told him with teary eyes. She smiled at him even as her tears ran over her lips and dripped off her chin. They poured down the face of the frog girl who wished she had said this so long ago. "I- I know it's not fair. I know it seems like it's all over, and I'm only saying it because it's the end… I was just a coward. Zach-chan, please. Fight."

Tsuyu blinked out the last of her tears and her expression intensified. She had not considered it when she came over and sat with him in the first place. But in the corner of her eyes she could still see the rest of them fighting. "Please," she whispered again. Her head turned and she looked out there, and Zach turned his as well and looked to where Tsuyu did. Admitting all that guilt to Zach, finally, Tsuyu felt loads of weight lifting off her shoulders. With that weight gone, she felt like she really might deserve the title of 'hero' again, so watching as her friends fought that monster without her, made her arms and legs start to fill with strength again.

Zach looked back at Tsuyu after staring towards All For One for a moment. Kirishima went flying past them far to their right side and smashed more of the building at their backs apart. Sato and Shoji each went flying a different direction. "Star-Spangled Man!" Ryukyu yelled up in horror, as All For One ripped the Quirk from the American's body in a horrific show of the villain's original Quirk.

All For One laughed at his helpless enemy who had his Quirk stolen and no longer had the strength to pull away. Two circles at the top half of the villain's scarred face glowed a familiar red color, and Star-Spangled Man's own heat vision burned through his eyeballs and out the back of his skull. All For One threw the American's corpse and laughed at his enemies who screamed in rage for their ally but still recoiled in fear as they saw the terrifying villain's face scanning past each of them.

"I was wrong," Tsuyu whispered. She pushed up off the floor right as All For One was turning their way. The villain stopped when his head was pointed towards them. Even without eyes it still felt like the villain was staring straight at her, though his focus was really on the boy sitting next to her who lifted his chin and watched Tsuyu stand at his side. "There is a reason to fight still. Always," she said, her voice getting stronger. The tears remained on her face but her eyes focused on the villain in a more hardened way with nothing to lose to cause her to fear despite him glaring their direction.

"I should have told you all of that sooner. I should have realized it, sooner," Tsuyu admitted softer the second version of that statement, as she could not have told him any sooner when she only fully accepted his real return earlier that night. Kendo looked back to her right, and Iida turned in to his left to see Tsuyu stepping forward and curling her small fists out in front of her. "We need your help, Zach-chan. Even if there's no point in fighting anymore. Even if we can't win, we all need you to help us. Let's fight together."

Sato slammed his fists down at his sides and then curled his fingers into the ground and pushed up. Mt. Lady curled one hand into the dead grass and dug through part of the lawn as she dragged herself up again. Shoji felt weak but lifted up onto one knee and then the other, blood dripping down the right side of his face from under his silver hairline. A yell behind Zach followed by the sounds of debris bursting out indicated that Kirishima just emerged from the rubble once again.

"I know it seems like it's over. The world might never…" Tsuyu sniffled in once and could not finish that horrible sentence. "But please, Zach-chan. Let's at least fight together. One last time." Zach stared at her. He looked into Tsuyu's eyes that had tears in them but a look behind those tears hoping for him to join her in this last stand. Her look was desperate for him to fight by her side once again as friends which they had not been for so long. Tsuyu turned back away first. She bent her legs and placed her hands down on the floor. Her thighs tightened up as she got ready to bounce using all her leg strength.

Iida and Kendo faced back forward. Kirishima marched ahead on top of the broken Lodge that his friends were buried underneath. Ectoplasm clones spread out down the broken driveway and on the sides on the front lawn. The Princess' Royal Guards were scattered about among other heroes all trying to keep fighting.

All For One lifted up a wall of dirt near the entrance to the property then sent it flying in a veil of green glow at a few police cars and hero vehicles driving up to the gates. Underguard spun the wheel of his vehicle to the side then yelled at the girl in the passenger seat, "OUT!" Rubbergirl leapt out without any hesitation and rolled to soften her landing as the car was still in motion. The car crashed as part of the street lifted up while it was still moving, but Underguard leapt out of the driver's side too before the rising dirt and pavement could crush down on top of the vehicle.

Underguard expected to see Intanzo after witnessing the Quirk's abilities. He and Rubbergirl froze though as they got back up and looked into the property where Ryukyu attacked again with Mt. Lady's support in order to stop the villain from focusing on the new reinforcements outside. "All For One," Rubbergirl whispered.

All For One's right arm turned massive and covered in rippling red muscles. He smashed away Ryukyu and then held up his arm and brought another up that turned equally as large, catching Mt. Lady's fist and making a huge shockwave ripple out around him. He curled his fingers into Mt. Lady's knuckles, and she screamed as his super strength added to Muscular's Quirk was too much for Mt. Lady to handle. All For One winced as a piercing whistling noise hit him in his eardrums. He loosened his grip and spun, glaring with the top of his face glowing red towards the fence that he fired beams towards only for Gang Orca to leap into the air and snap his infuriated terrifying face forward to fire more focused sonar waves at the villain who flew higher up to dodge them.

Zach looked past Tsuyu at the battle going on in front of them. It's, already… He blinked a few times. In his peripheral vision while staring towards All For One, he could see the tears still falling from Tsuyu's eyes even as those eyes darted around looking for an opening or a way that she could help fight against this monster. Is it? Zach wondered.

His eyes lowered down. Zach stared at the ground just past his feet. He stared at the girl who he failed to revive. Momo lay there, still partly covered under debris, and now a thin veneer of dust too from the constant battle around them. The gray ash of Plague itself was not piling up anywhere, seeming to fade after touching the floor like snow on a warm surface. His right hand twitched while instinctively reaching towards her to try again. Zach grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and lowered it back down.

Zach lifted his gaze past Momo and over to Midoriya who All Might was carrying away. He just carried him over to where Ectoplasm had put down Bakugo though. Everything was destroyed around them. There was no shelter to bring the bodies of his students. All Might just lowered his successor back to the ground and collapsed again himself, his head bowing in resignation and defeat as there was nothing he could do. Is that it? Can I do nothing? Zach wondered. He looked over his shoulder at one of Todoroki's arms sticking out of the rubble behind him. Those three were dying. They just saw everyone else die from what they were suffering from, and they tried to fight anyway!

Zach released his right wrist. He lowered both hands down to the floor at his sides. They trembled when they touched the ground though. His eyes slammed shut to get the image of the dead girl in front of him out of his head, but all he saw was another dead girl, screaming out his name in pain and terror. Over and over. Every time! I- I just can't… "Please, Zach-chan." Zach heard Tsu's voice echoing in his head louder than the screams from the burning red-haired girl he could still see so vividly. It's not hopeless. Stand. Stand!

Zach's trembling fingers steadied on the floor. He curled them into the ground below him. His fingers ripped through the wood like it was butter. Both his flesh fingers and his metal ones dug through the solid ground like it was nothing. Zach pushed down on the ground after curling his grip into the floorboards. He leaned forward over his already bent legs and stood up on them. "Fwiiii-" Zach breathed in. He sucked in breath and it puffed his chest out. He straightened his shoulders from his slouched position and slid his feet out to plant them in a steadier stance.

"Haaaaaahh," Zach breathed out. It's not all over. Not yet. One chance. Believe. "Fwwwwiiiii- haaaahhhhhhhh," Zach breathed in and out again. His head shook around. His friends around him looked back towards him in shock to see him on his feet. It had been hard for any of them to shout out for him to help, and most had not even tried after taking one look at him. Tsuyu noticed that Iida and Kendo had both turned around, and she turned her head back to the left and stared behind her to see Zach look straight into her eyes.

She needed my help. They all do. Everyone here- One shot. A real shot.

Doesn't matter how little hope there is. As long as I'm alive, there's always a chance. Always a reason to fight. Zach shook his head around so fast in order to focus his thoughts that his face looked like a blur for a second. All For One darted his focus in Zach's direction and immediately ripped up the ground below him in a wave in most directions to force everyone back. The only direction the wave did not rise and push out towards was at the dark-haired teenager who stared back towards him now with a look that showed none of the fear that every other hero had in their eyes. Believe. You let it come in the way. The despair. You knew though. One more thing and it would be too much. Too much to even think straight. Tsu shook that feeling for just a moment, and I remember now…

"Tsu-chan," Zach started. He looked down from All For One and to the green-haired girl closer to him. "Everyone," Zach continued with a glance around him at his other classmates. "Hold him off for one minute. I'll be right back."

His tone shook some of them out of the stupors they had been fighting in. Just as he had just been shaken from his own, their stupors had been of a different sort than his. As Zach's body dematerialized in front of their eyes into a black wind, they all felt themselves jolt at that feeling that they instantly understood the meaning of. Zach disintegrated in front of them. His body turned from a solid straight into a gas of black smoke that blew away so fast it looked as if he just faded away. Zach's black wind blew to the east back in the direction of Tokyo. Everyone at the Kaio Springs Lodge spun and watched as the last trails of black smoke either got too far or thinned out too much that it was impossible to see any longer.

Hold him off? Kendo wondered while finally looking back towards All For One herself.

"You've got it," Kirishima responded. A grin spread across his face. A huge sharp-toothed smile covered his expression that All For One snapped his face back towards after seeing the red-haired teen look at him like that.

"What is that look for, Red Riot? Sazaki has abandoned you."

"Yeah right," Sato growled, rubbing an arm across his lips and wiping away some blood.

Shoji shook his head denying the mocking tone of their enemy who was clearly wrong about that.

"He knows there is no chance so he flies away!" All For One bellowed.

Zach's tone told his friends something different. One of Trabo's four bodies was close enough that he heard what Zach had said, and the other three all felt their hearts race as well at the shared sound of his voice. "Zach?" "Run away?" "You really don't know him." "You bitch," Obart finished after the other three clones who spoke consecutively towards the supervillain fighting them.

The tone in Zach's voice had shaken a feeling from his friends who recognized what it was. Hope, Tsuyu thought at what she felt in her own chest that was suddenly pounding so much harder than it already was. It was a feeling of hope that had been absent from all of them until that moment. Most did not even realize that they had felt so hopeless until that second that they heard a confidence in Zach's voice that all was not lost.

He sounded strong! Kendo thought. She was still astonished to have heard it. It made no sense at all. She believed it though. "All For One! You won't get away with this!" Kendo pointed a giant index finger at the villain who cocked his head a bit to the side at the way these young heroes were all suddenly so filled with courage and even smiling at him in heroic ways. The rest of the adult heroes had appeared a lot more murderous without hiding their intent at all from the villain who destroyed the world.

Why'd we have to be so far from Musutafu? Zach wondered while flying away through a burning city his black smoke shot through around him.

Detective Haga snapped his head up as a wave of black smoke flew through a building that a helicopter had crashed into earlier. He had a few people huddled behind him who he was trying to evacuate to a safe area, but so much of Tokyo was on fire after every car crashed and every aerial transport fell. The burning building above him on his right side was suddenly flooded with Death that smothered the flames and put out every fire it passed.

The green-skinned police detective stared in awe up at the wave of darkness that shot by so fast it was difficult to even see him. "That's Lifebringer!" A woman shouted behind him. "What's he doing?!"

"Why isn't he reviving everyone?"

"Do you think, he could have done this?"

Haga shook his head at the sound of such an incredulous question. The detective had horns sticking out of his face. He was one of the first people Lifebringer had ever revived, and he knew the kid well. "He's here to save us," Haga assured the people he was protecting behind him. His eyes darted back to the building that Zach had put the flames out in, where there was still a long rotor of a helicopter hanging out of a window looking like it might fall at any second. "Now stay close to me! I'll find us somewhere to lay low while he figures this out!"

The cop clenched his eyes shut and prayed as he ran, I believe in you, Lifebringer,

"Let's get him!" Kirishima yelled while sprinting forward past his classmates straight towards the villain who had left one pathway to him.

The rest of the front lawn of the Lodge had furled up like waves before freezing to block off the other heroes who had to climb over them or go around. "Everyone on," Ryukyu said in a low voice to the heroes gathered around her. "We hit him hard and all together."

"Together," Gang Orca agreed. He nodded to his side at Ectoplasm as Ryukyu flapped her wings.

"Now! Mt. Lady!" Underguard yelled over his shoulder as one of the Ectoplasm clones gave him the signal. Mt. Lady jumped up from her prone position on the opposite side as where Ryukyu just flew all the heroes up into the air and around towards the fallen Lodge so they were out of the way.

One wall broke apart as Mt. Lady's foot connected. All For One's reflexes were too fast. The hail of earth and concrete froze in midair between Mt. Lady's foot and the villain who swirled all that debris around him so fast it looked like a tornado. Chunks flew out of the tornado towards Ryukyu who dodged many of them, only for one sharpened spike of pavement to fly towards her too fast-

VWWSHh! Toyo's eye lasers burned the spike to a crisp.

Some of the debris curled and changed course to fly towards Toyo. Haru and Karu sprinted in front of their boss and threw their arms up. The Royal Guards' red and blue barriers merged into a stronger purple one that deflected the glowing green debris flying their way.

Iida spotted a piece of driveway that had fallen over a chunk of rock. A ramp, he thought at the sight of it. His calves ignited, and then they glowed bright blue. He sped past Kirishima who just felt the wind of his classmate passing by without even catching a glimpse of Iida himself.

Need to give Iida a second! Asui and Kendo both thought simultaneously.

Tsuyu's long tongue shot out and grabbed a piece of rubble flying towards Sato who had gotten spun the other way by a smaller piece that just hit him. She wrapped her tongue around it and allowed the momentum of the piece flying his way to continue while changing it herself and twisting her whole body. The green glow around that chunk vanished when Tsuyu held onto it. Intanzo's Matter Control no longer worked now that she had a hold, but the speed All For One sent it flying continued its momentum as Tsuyu whipped back around and launched at the villain who turned sideways and let the piece just fly past him.

Then he rose his arms and punched through two more larger chunks that came flying up slower after Kendo threw them. All For One did not even cover his arms with Muscle Augmentation, as his enhanced strength alone was enough to keep his focus on the spinning debris he was hitting all the older heroes with at once and from a distance… His head started pointing down, as a blur of a figure with a blue trail of flames behind him sped up into the air below him and then flipped so he was upside down. Iida bicycle-kicked while in mid-flip, slamming his leg into All For One's lower back, then twisting his whole body and sending his kick downwards at the ground that All For One softened reactively on his landing.

The villain managed to land feet-first, but now that he was on ground level, he was directly in Kirishima's path. All For One slammed his right fist forward as Kirishima charged at him and slammed his own into the villain. Their knuckles connected and pushed back and forth against each other. All For One's right arm wrapped up in Muscle Augmentation and gained strength. His feet lifted back off the floor and he leaned forward, putting more power into his huge red arm and making Kirishima's legs bend below him.

The ground cratered underneath Kirishima's feet. Cracks shot out away from him, and Kirishima snapped his arm back up into the growing muscly arm of the villain. "RRaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" Kirishima screamed while chips in his Hardened body got larger. "UNBREAKABLE!" He roared, and his Hardening got so much stronger. His feet starting to skid backwards on the ground planted firmly. The crater doubled in size. Wind blew away from them and knocked people back trying to rush to Kirishima's aid. Iida was descending out of the air and pulling a leg back for another kick, but the wind made him cross his arms and then let out a gasp as he was blown away too by the powerful collision below him. The remnants of the walls of dirt and stone broke apart and fell away from the two as Kirishima screamed out even louder.

Tsuyu's tongue got blown away in the wind as she tried to lash it out at All For One. Mt. Lady uncrossed her arms that she had needed to block flying debris with as All For One had the easiest time hitting that giant target. She was covered in scratches, bruises, and bloody wounds. She looked down in amazement though at the teenager with a jagged appearance who was fighting back against such a powerful blow that the ground around them was ripping apart. All For One could not focus his other Quirks on her and the other heroes anymore, and yet wind was still slamming powerfully into the front of her body.

All For One pulled his arm back from the punch. The Muscle Augmentation on his right arm sucked back into his skin while his body twisted the other way. It all bulged onto his left arm. He flew backwards a few feet and higher up in the air, before flying back down and gaining the speed to add to the force of the punch as his left arm grew twice as large as his right just was. Kirishima kept his right foot planted but slid his left leg back and dragged a line through the cracked floor with his Unbreakable left foot. His left fist clenched and then Hardened, and Hardened again. It got more jagged and spiked, and then he punched it while a red arm flying down so fast that it had its own white aura slammed down at him.

The ground under Kirishima's feet was cracked. Sections of cracked driveway and lawn were connected to each other still in large sizes. Far enough away from Kirishima's feet that it could be affected by Inorganic Matter Control, the ground suddenly destabilized and broke apart much thinner. These were chunks connected to the ones that Kirishima stood on. His feet were planted down hard, and suddenly, they were planted on very loose ground. All For One smirked ravenously at the moment his enormous left fist slammed down into Kirishima's that punched up at him but lost strength in the last second as Kirishima's planted feet wobbled.

Kirishima's left elbow buckled in and smashed into his chest. His knuckles cracked and blood splashed out of them, as it did from his chest and out of all the cracks that just broke open all over his body as All For One's enormous fist smashed into him at full strength and speed. Kirishima's back slammed into the ground. Wind blew in all directions and picked up the broken down walls All For One had created. People went flying backwards while yelling out their friend's name. Sato planted his feet but a chunk of earth smashed into his face and sent him flying backwards. Six arms waved around in front of Shoji and smacked away debris fast enough though that he managed to stay close.

Shoji Mezo saw slight movement under All For One's fist, but he also saw the amount of blood that splashed away when All For One's fist cracked his friend apart. Kirishima's suit was torn to shreds. His Hardened jagged body had blood dripping off every spike. Shoji sprinted forward with a rage-filled look somehow still visible despite most of his bloody face being covered by his bangs or his mask. His six arms extended out towards All For One who turned first to Mt. Lady and rose his right arm not covered in Muscle Augmentation towards her. That hand covered in a green glow, and the ground underneath Mt. Lady's stomping foot shot up fast while spinning around and sharpening at the top. A giant spike of ground flew up in the air and impaled Mt. Lady's right foot, and she screamed while falling backwards with gallons of blood pouring out of her sole.

Six arms wrapped around All For One who turned back to the infuriated student who tried pulling the villain back towards himself. All For One just flew up in the air though, yanking Shoji off his feet by doing so. He rose up the boy who dangled there just trying to tug downwards. A tongue shot out and wrapped around Shoji's legs, and Kendo grabbed onto Tsuyu's body and tried pulling her back while she tugged down on Shoji who kept pulling AFO down too. The villain's flight faltered for a moment as he dropped a meter instead of rising any higher, but then he pulled back his left arm still the size it just was for the punch into Kirishima. Shoji lost focus for a second as he snapped his gaze down towards Kirishima who coughed and sputtered up blood showing something had pierced his lungs. "Kirishima!" Shoji yelled towards him, only to look back too late as he felt all the slack in his fully extended arms. All For One was diving towards him.

"Shoji!" Sato yelled while sprinting back forward. Sato skid to a stop.

Tsuyu unwrapped her tongue from her friend who was suddenly only two feet in front of her. All For One pulled back just in time. Shoji had released him when he felt how much slack there was and saw All For One flying towards him rather than farther away. He needed to cross those arms to protect himself from the same fate he was so concerned was coming for Kirishima. Now All For One was twenty meters from him, and he was back on solid ground right in front of Asui and Kendo.

Zach stared down below him at the redhead who only managed to sputter blood once more before falling still. He saw me, Zach assured himself. That doesn't matter! Why did I think that? Zach winced and clenched his eyes shut for a second but then floated down to land on the ground between Kirishima's body and the six-armed boy he just put down behind him.

"You came back," All For One remarked. He was even faster than Deku. I barely saw him approaching in time. Can Death hurt me? No. No it's too similar to Plague. The villain grinned down at the hero who did not glare back at him but just stared towards the crater and his dead friend in the middle of it. "If you could hear his heartbeat like I have the ability to," All For One mentioned. "You would know-"

"I know," Zach cut off the villain who froze with his mouth still open. "What do you think? Death is just a name?" Zach countered the villain floating ahead of him who everyone else just stared at and backed away from now that Lifebringer was here and talking down to him in such a condescending way. The challenge was being made. Their united fight was now on pause, because Lifebringer was here.

Zach panted a few times while standing in front of some of his friends, behind others. Dead heroes who had fallen for a second time were littered around the property. All For One did not look to have a scratch on him. "You fought hard, Kirishima," Zach whispered. "You all did," Zach rose his voice louder. "Now, it's my turn," Zach lowered his right hand in front of him and curled it around something in his palm.

All For One focused on the object the boy was holding. Despite having no eyes, he could see what it was that Zach was holding with one of his many abilities. The corners of the villain's lips curled up and he laughed. "Is that all? You left them to get yourself a vial of Trigger? That's illegal, you know?" The feigned tone of disbelief at the hero was followed by more taunting laughter.

Zach stared calmly up towards the villain while taking heavier breaths. His friends behind him watched as Zach turned his head and looked back towards Momo's body once more, then refaced All For One in a more determined way. "It won't be enough," All For One told him. The corners of his lips lowered a little but stayed raised above flat so he was still grinning at his enemy.

I came back as fast as I could. I'm sorry, Kirishima. No! Even for a second time. It's the same! Second or third or whatever! It will be enough. It has to be. Zach took in another deep breath. His heart thudded in his ears but was slowing down. He could hear his slowing heart rate as he prepared himself.

"That calm. That power you possess," All For One said. His voice had a tone of honestly being impressed in it. Zach frowned more at him hearing that tone of voice, but All For One just smirked more to see that it annoyed Zach that the villain was impressed with him. "I know you, Sazaki. I know to be wary of you. For a long time I had decided to be done with this world, and I have obtained the Quirks that will allow me to leave it behind and explore the stars when I'm gone. For new worlds to enjoy. I could have used your Quirk for that, but I knew that you were hoping for that. Expecting it."

Zach glared darkly at him. His breathing steadied. Everything felt so calm in that moment, but he did feel angry and that made his heart rate speed back up again as he listened to this unapologetic monster. Unforgivable. Beyond any redemption. Only Death for him. Zach breathed out a more ragged breath. Picture her. Momo. This must be done.

"Tell me, Sazaki. Will you chase me out into the stars for vengeance? Or would you stay on this broken world with all those you revived who will try their best to rebuild? Will you remain as their protector, for the day of my return?" All For One wondered to his enemy who grit his teeth and continued seething his heavy breaths through them.

He can't destroy the vial. Intanzo's Quirk doesn't allow it. I'm wasting time. Precious seconds are passing by. Zach's heart raced faster and faster. He had steadied it for a moment. Calm had fallen over him, but every word out of All For One's mouth was infuriating him… and yet, that was not it. I'm afraid. Accept the fear. You know it must be done. He knew that All For One could not destroy the vial, but his hand just curled around the injection tighter without moving it yet.

All For One focused on the vial itself that Zach's sweaty right hand was curled around. No organic matter nor matter in contact with organic matter. No clothes, no air around him, no floor below him, and no altering an object in his hands. Death cannot affect me! Sazaki must know this. All For One's lips flattened. What is this? This feeling I'm feeling?

"It has to be Midoriya who beats All For One," Zach stated. He said it firmly while looking up at All For One, but he was not speaking to the villain. His friends around him and the other heroes could hear that he was speaking more to them than to their enemy. All Might lifted his head up from the body of his successor he had stared back down at after Zach's re-arrival on the scene. He looked at Sazaki in the same confusion as everyone else around him, including the villain who kept trying to lift a corner of his lips back up in a smirk but failed at doing so.

"A monster can't save the world. And that's what I am. That's what I've always been," Zach growled. His breathing calmed back down. Zach was breathing so heavily that it was audible. "All For One, called me a 'thing' a long time ago now. I, for years, have thought about that. I let it mess with me. My head. He was right though." Zach's right hand stopped shaking around the vial he was holding. "Maybe I am a monster. But…"

All For One felt dread. It was a strange sensation in his gut that caused the dread. I have rarely ever felt this in my life. What is- I know. It is an uneasiness of not knowing what is going to happen next. All For One flew back a little, and then he shot up high into the sky as Zach slammed his right hand to his chest and plunged the needle through his skin.

Zach pierced through his body that turned to Death in front of his heart in order to allow the needle to pass through clothes and skin and flesh and bone alike. His heart remained in place though for the needle to inject into. The liquid in the vial drained into him as Zach's thumb pressed down. He pulled the empty needle back out and dropped it to the floor. The action was painful but he did not even flinch while stabbing his own heart. "But, I am not going to let things end like this," Zach finished.

All For One flew up high when Zach injected. He smiled wide again though when he stopped after seeing Zach inject just like he thought the boy would. It was what he was expecting, after all, so the sensation he had that something strange was going on here that he could not expect vanished from his mind. "Hahaha, you know your own Quirk well, Sazaki. Even on Trigger! You are not able to revive someone who has been revived before. You cannot revive someone who has been killed by Death, and the same can be said for Plague! Trigger won't bridge the gap-"

"Who said anything about Trigger?"

Zach's voice came out steady. It was calm, yet loud. It silenced everything on the property. Everyone looking towards him felt confused and unsettled at the same time. Zach had turned around and was walking towards Yaoyorozu. My insides are on fire, Zach thought. A whip of Death shot out of his leg and pushed aside all the debris on Yaoyorozu's body and cleared her of dust too. He reached down. It's bubbling up. Push it into my right hand- "Ah!" Zach gasped out. A giant smile of pain covered his face, as his hand blackened on touch with Yaoyorozu's face.

"AHhhhh-" Yaoyorozu sucked in a huge breath while the gray shade of her face filled with color again. The blood on her skin faded away as if absorbing back into her. Everyone staring towards her gasped or just stared in shock at the girl's moving body. Many of them were still gawking at Lifebringer himself though, slowly processing what he had just asked All For One. The villain's hands shook at his sides as he more quickly understood what Sazaki had just told him.

"You… You couldn't have- There were none left!" All For One yelled down.

"Who claimed such a thing?" Zach wondered.

Yaoyorozu stared up at the boy standing above her. He had met her gaze for a moment before turning back to All For One and questioning that in a cocky tone that could not hide the underlying terror in his voice.

Oh God no, Kendo thought while lifting a hand back to normal size and covering her mouth with it. He still felt pain? Bringing her back? And he's… he's about to- Kendo could not wrap her mind around it. She thought of that noise he made and the look on his face when he brought Yaoyorozu back. The very thought alone was breaking her and she stumbled back a few feet from the boy whose arms both rippled in black bubbles that sank back into his skin as he tried to keep it under control.

My body's still adjusting. It doesn't understand. Make sure it absorbs slowly. Don't let it get out of control. Zach took heavy, deep breaths. He remained calm even though his heart rate had spiked so fast it sounded like a snare drum in his ears. He wondered up towards the villain who looked shocked at what Zach just asked him. "Oh, did you really trust that I destroyed it all? Just because that's what I said I did? Come on. You should know by now, not to trust me. You once said to 'think constantly,' All For One! You may not have been saying it to me at the time, but it stuck with me since that day in Camino Ward. I made it my own."

Zach's lips trembled but lifted up into a smirk that was meant to be intimidating and menacing. He just shivered though and curled both fists at his sides nervously. It's too late to go back now. You have to do it! You made the choice. Stop being so afraid! Zach thought, in fear.

His fingers opened back up from his fists then slowly curled back in. Each of his knuckles on his right hand cracked individually when he curled his fists and steadied them once more. "I was going to destroy every last vial," Zach started. Yaoyorozu sat up behind him while Zach stepped forward and his skin started to darken. His body was turning tan, while wind whipped up around him and sent chills down the spines of heroes and villain alike. "But as I held the last one, even in my madness, I had to question what I was doing. I had to think about it."

"You see, I have known for a long, long time," Zach paused and his lips flattened out. His expression darkened. The top half of his face turned pitch black below his hairline, but no red eyes flared this time. His hair merged into the top of his skull, while the bottom of his face remained human so he could continue speaking out of his mouth. Black bubbles rippled out of his arms and legs as he spoke in a voice getting louder and seemingly carrying on the wind, "That I have the power to destroy the world. I didn't need Quirk-enhancing drugs to do it. I didn't have to steal anyone's Quirk. For years, I was too afraid to even confront the thought. The mere idea that I already had the power to end the world if I so chose to do so, was terrifying. I wouldn't even allow it! And I nearly destroyed every last dose because I failed to have that thought. That conversation with myself."

"But All For One," Zach continued in a steadier albeit darker voice than ever. "If I could already kill the world, then what would be the point in destroying every last vial of Apocalypse?"

Yaoyorozu's heart stopped again. Her head pulled back in realization of what he was talking about and what just happened. He hasn't revived anyone else. He couldn't do it. It's whatever Quirk All For One stole. The energies are similar, and he needed more Death! She was too smart. She caught up quickly to what was happening here. The fact that Zach was on the phone with Rebel in an emergency call before, the plane falling out of the sky, the sounds of the screams from her classmates inside back when she was dying, it all made the current situation very clear to her. Still, hearing what he just did in order to bring her back made her whole body tremble in fear. "No," she whispered.

Darkness permeated Zach's skin. It expelled from his body. The wisps seemed to pull backwards then release farther, then pull back again for a second before getting even longer. As if each beat of his heart was pulsing more and more Death out that he was just barely holding back. Control. It's all about control! The bottom half of his face blackened but his lips continued to move, "I told Kaminari that I destroyed it all! I told everyone else the same thing. But I trained so that no one can read my mind. That means no one would ever be able to find out that I had hidden one, or where I had hidden it. Which means the only danger of keeping the Apocalypse was if I did not trust myself. And I don't! I really, really don't trust myself! But I could destroy the world without it! So what does trusting myself even matter?!" Zach yelled with the corners of his lips curling up at the question.

A thought I had even as broken apart as I was after the bomb. A moment of clarity. Why was it I needed to destroy the Apocalypse? To stop Kaminari from using it, sure. Prevent Shigaraki from turning the world to dust… or was it for myself? And if the reason was to stop myself from a rampage, then I was just lying to myself. Pretending, still, that I didn't already have the power to do it without Apocalypse. Avoiding that conversation, Zach thought. Despite the fear and the pain, there was a slight feeling of smug satisfaction that he had kept one vial hidden away. "I wanted to destroy it all. But, 'what if?'" Zach wondered.

He called it out as if suggesting it was the thought that he had when he shattered the rest of the vials. "I knew that one day a world-destroying Quirk might come about. I've always known! So 'what if' someone destroyed the world anyway? And the only way to stop them," Zach took in a huge breath. His body started to break apart. The black wisps got thicker and stopped pulsing back in to just expand out farther and farther, branching away and multiplying then getting even thicker and just merging those new branches together anyway. "The only way, to stop it, could be by using the Apocalypse…"

"No matter the cost," Zach finished.

His body exploded out in all directions. His voice echoed out of the dark cloud that was nothing like a mist. It was not solid nor liquid, yet it felt too thick to be a gas as it slammed into them. They could still breathe inside it, but they could barely see around them as everything was coated in darkness. A pitch black cloud surrounded the property and continued to push past everyone so fast that it was like a raging river more than a fast wind. The Death got in their mouths. It hit them in the eyes that they shut, only to open back up as the Death was not actually wind or water that was hurting their eyes when it touched.

It passes right through us, Sato looked down at his arms that the Death absorbed into and pushed right out the other sides of. So much, Sato thought in awe while looking around and spotting some classmates inside the dark maelstrom of Death that encompassed everything that they could see.

All For One flew up higher and higher. Despite his claims to the contrary, he did question if the growing Death cloud below really could not harm him. Sazaki was there for the trials. He knows exactly what he just did.

"This is the exact scenario that I held onto one vial of Apocalypse for!" Zach's voice boomed from the cloud of Death that expanded first and then focused on the dead bodies it felt inside of it.

I feel a sense of Death around their bodies, Zach thought. Thinking is strange too. My brain is, spreading…

"Come back." Zach ordered those inside of his darkness. The Death solidified into arms and tentacles that wrapped around chunks of ceiling and slabs of walls. The student body buried in the rubble of the Kaio Springs Lodge were uncovered. He exhumed all their bodies within seconds. Death pushed aside rubble and cleared a wide area that would be safe for them. Then the Death absorbed into their bodies.

"Rrrrr…Rraa-gh aaagh- KAaaaAAAH YAAAAHH!" Zach's voice reverberated inside of the darkness.

Shoji felt something. Is that pain? No. I'm not in pain. Shoji knew it quicker than those around him too confused at what they were sensing to place their fingers on it. It's like when it filled his entire room, Shoji realized. I could feel what he felt. Is that, what he's feeling? Oh man, Zach. Is that- is that how bad it hurts? Is that, how afraid you really are? Shoji's eyes watered up at what he was feeling beyond the sensation of Zach feeling pain.

Yaoyorozu's heart raced faster and faster. She covered her mouth with both hands. She could not find her voice for the life of her. Yaoyorozu looked over towards All Might who put his arms around both of the boys sitting up next to him and pulled them into one shared hug that the two were shocked to be in. Bakugo and Midoriya's heads on either of All Might's shoulders looked around them in all directions.

"What is this?" Bakugo growled. His voice came out raspy and confused, and he cleared his throat after hearing what he sounded like. "I was dead," he pulled out of All Might's arms. He glanced down at his arms that felt better than they had in years. "He couldn't revive- I knew-" Bakugo turned and his voice cut off. "Kirishima!" He yelled and started running into a crater where he saw his cracked-up friend in a puddle of his own blood. "Damn it! DAMN-" Bakugo froze. Kirishima's skin was sealing up. His body crushed inside that crater lifted up wrapped in a more condensed black tentacle that moved him over towards Bakugo and rested him down on flat ground right as Kirishima's eyes were snapping back open.

"Wh-What?" Kirishima was confused. In his final seconds, a minute ago, he had seen Zach appear above him. There was a satisfying feeling in dying this time knowing that he had done his job. Unlike last time where Zach got taken anyway, he had stalled for the time Zach asked for, and he was the only one killed in order to give Zach that minute. "I don't understand," he whispered, because he really did not believe when he died that he would be coming back a second time.

Bakugo was shocked as he stared down at Kirishima's blinking eyes full of confusion. The thicker black tentacle that had moved him and revived him broke apart and rushed past Bakugo who spun after it. Midoriya, Sato, and All Might all spun around too and watched as the Death swirled up into a thicker black wind shooting away so fast into the distance inside this black cloud. "Farther…" Zach's voice growled all around them.

"How is he doing this?" Midoriya gasped out in shock, standing up himself and helping All Might back to his feet as he did. "Zach," Midoriya smiled wide in disbelief but amazement at the same time. "You're amazing. You're doing it, Zach!"

"He used Apocalypse," All Might whispered.

Midoriya's bright smile as he shouted a second ago froze on his face. Sweat covered his expression and dripped down while he turned his head with a look of horror covering it. All Might had dread on his own face as he knew the kind of expression Midoriya was about to show him. He bowed his head after making eye contact with his successor. "He, kept one vial."

"Apocalypse?" Kirishima whispered. "A drug that enhances Quirks, and one that makes them disappear. They, wanted to see what it could do. The results were…" A conversation with Zach from years ago echoed through his mind and Kirishima could not breathe at how he remembered Zach describing it to him. "It completely destabilizes a person's DNA. It has the mental deterioration symptoms of Trigger, and after the effects, if the one who used it survives their Quirk's peak state, they lose their Quirk forever."

"Zach!" Kirishima screamed with his fists balling in fury at both sides. "You know- You've seen-" Kirishima bit down so hard that it hurt. "I watched a video of the test trials though with some other villains and Shigaraki." "You know what it does!" Kirishima roared. "Only two of the eight test subjects survived, and neither had their Quirks afterwards, and one of those two went half insane too. Those, with heteromorphic Quirks all died. Their extra arms, fell off. New appendages that grew and got really muscular, exploded maybe before ever reaching the peak. Skin pigmentation that wasn't normal melted through skin…" Tears filled Kirishima's eyes while he imagined the horrific descriptions Zach had given him about the test trials of this drug.

Bakugo and Midoriya both imagined Dandy. They pictured the villain who had used the drug to become so powerful. Bakugo turned and looked back towards Deku himself who had been the one to fight that monster the rest of them only saw on television. Midoriya's eyes were full of water but had not started crying any tears. Zach saw it too. He knows better than anyone, Midoriya slammed his eyes shut and pressed his chin down into his chest. So then, it had to be the only choice. I thought you destroyed it all. You told me and Kirishima just this morning that you did. Why do you always lie?! I- I would have told you to destroy it if you told me the truth. And, I'd still be dead if you had. Midoriya squinted his eyes back open and looked through the dark wind searching for a face or a core body to look to.

"Midoriya," a low voice spoke out of the wind directly around Midoriya Izuku. Others close-by heard it and turned towards him, but there was no sign that Zach was over here or that the dark wind was forming into a more solid body. It just kept expanding outwards around them. "He's above… Please, Midoriya. Don't-" Zach's voice seemed to hesitate, but then it got ten times louder. "RRAAAAAAA! Ooohh AY-YAAAAA ARooOWOWWWW! AHHH FUUUAAA-"

"Zach!" Midoriya yelled into the screaming darkness.

"Midoriya. Don't make, ahh- the same…" The screaming continued farther away. Sounds of dark screams echoed throughout the darkness, and others around Midoriya turned their heads and looked back to the Lodge where more people were standing up and shouting from. Even as Zach kept screaming in different directions, his voice seemed to overlap with his closer voice that was scratchy and dark but unconstrained by vocal cords in his cloud of Death. "Don't let him. Not this time. He, destroyed the world. Killed everyone. I know, you can't- But I need you to. I need you to, Deku. Fix All Might's mistake. This time. This one time. Please… I can't, leave it all to you otherwise. I wouldn't know if the world's okay. Please. I'm losing it. I won't be able to- ahhh, I can't continue to- AHHhh-"

Spread farther, Zach thought, his thought echoing through his body from an origin unknown. Scattered thoughts around the cloud wondered where the Death was thickest that the order came from. I'm dividing. I can't have- so many thoughts- Midoriya needs to- All For One is… Just revive. Too much. Too many. Only revive. Just revive. All revive. I'll revive. Spread out. Farther. Expand! This far, and I'm still so condensed! DENSER THAN EVER! SPREAD! Zach's thoughts came to a consensus. The scattered ideas prioritized into one command. One objective.

Detective Haga turned his head as he heard a shout from the people behind him. He turned his head slowly to the right as he spotted something that made him question his reality for a moment. All of the survivors with him who had been revived, and hundreds of other revived people in the Tokyo metro area, stared to the west. They looked towards a tsunami larger than any wave ever could be. It rose hundreds of feet into the sky and curved towards them at the top. Like a sandstorm breaking across the desert. A tsunami crashing on shore. Looking like clouds rolling in with hurricane force, the wave of Death slammed through the city. It passed through windows and doors. Solid masses were as easy to pass through as liquids. Air-tight meant nothing to Plague, but it meant even less than nothing to Zach Sazaki's Death that phased through matter without slowing down.

The people of Tokyo could feel him just like the heroes standing up on the road between Tokyo and the Kaio Springs Lodge. Hawks and Endeavor turned to each other as they felt it. "Come back…" A deep voice echoed around them.

"That's, Sazaki," Hawks whispered.

Endeavor just stared off in the direction of the Lodge that they had almost reached before they collapsed. That is Sazaki. He is, suffering? Endeavor felt goosebumps on his arms. I can feel something. He looked at wisps of Death sliding over his hero costume. They passed right through his face and out the back of his head after he had been revived. I feel his agony. His fear that he won't be able to save us… but above all else, Endeavor's fists clenched and he rose his pained eyes above him into the thickness of the cloud above. I feel his sheer desire to bring us all back.

"Come back."

"Come back!"

"AAAHHEEYAAA- COME BACK!"

Ashido stepped up on a piece of sheetrock wall that Zach had moved to the side to provide a better clearing for everyone. She climbed up it and turned to look all around in disbelief at what was going on. The Lodge's property looked like a meteor had hit it. The building, lawns, driveway, gate and fences, they were all ripped up and destroyed. Craters were scattered around and heroes who should not have been here were all around them so it felt like some time had passed since they died. "What happened?" Ashido whispered. "Zach?" She wondered it into the darkness that was so thick right in front of her face that she imagined he was actually there.

Mina reached out and curled her fingers against the side of what she thought might be a black head of Death. Her hand passed through it, or the Death passed through her, she was unsure of which. "Zach? Thank you!" Ashido screamed out. Can he hear me? "THANK YOU!" She yelled out louder. "What is going on?" She muttered and shook her head around. She looked behind her again at a massive student body full of confused people who did not know what was happening. Ashido gulped at a feeling she got from the darkness all around her. He revived everyone already… didn't he?

She did not see anyone else getting revived. Mina heard a voice echoing around her though. It screamed, "…Farther!" Was it not just an attack on the Lodge? The realization was hard for the pink girl to figure out. Where, is he right now? How far…

Zach's voice screamed out around them and the entire atmosphere seemed to shake. "Too many- AAHHHHH!"

"BRaaa- RRAAAAGHHH!"

"FARTHER!"

"I CAN'T!"

His voice bounced around them. They heard him shouting out of different wisps. He had no mouth, but his voice reverberated everywhere and overlapped itself as he shouted multiple things at the same time. "Too many. Millions- OooAHHHH! It's- impossible… RRAAAA!"

Zach flooded Death into an apartment building. He moved through every doorway as easily as moving through the air itself. Parents lay in their beds. Kids in their bunks. Babies in their cribs. Families had collapsed next to dinner tables. A woman in her hallway with her key still in the doorknob, take-out dropped on the floor at her side and the food gray like her skin. Dead fruit on the counters had gray specks on them and looked of rot. Dogs and house cats lay dead at the feet of their owners. Fruit flies were dead at the windowsills and a spider dangled lifelessly from its web that it got stuck on and kept its corpse from falling. "I can feel it all. Every last one of them."

Zach could see every single room of that apartment complex. Yet at the same time, he saw all the individual condos a block away, and the soccer stadium with tens of thousands of people in it. Cars and busses full of bodies. Burned up corpses with little flesh remaining on them in the carcasses of fallen planes. Even the ones whose bodies are barely there. Just dust and ash. I can feel their death. The particles that made them up. It's all so vivid. So real. So fucking painful! Zach pushed his Death out farther but had to focus on reviving too rather than just expanding. "Come back!"

"Farther!"

"RAAAAGHH- OooooOAAAAHHH!"

"I CAN'T!"

"COME BACK!"

"DO IT!"

"COME BACK! Hahaha…"

"I can see it all- HAHA! Everything. I can't- I don't have eyes. I can see everything. I can hear it all! I can feel everything. Ahhahaha- HAHAHA!"

The dark voices overlapping started laughing over one another. "HAhaha- I CAN'T- RAAA-AAGhyyeeeEEAAA! YAAAAHHH! DO IT!" He screamed while thousands of people's injuries sealed up at once. Pain diluted throughout his body, but he could feel every inch of that massive dark cloud. Feeling it scattered throughout him might have diluted the pain, if he was not bringing back so many people at once that it cancelled out. "Millions! I- I can't… Ahhh HAHAHA!"

"It's too much. Ahahahaha- Tokyo alone!"

"FARTHER!" A contradicting voice screamed against the thoughts of doubt.

Some of those standing inside the madness started to wonder if Zach was actually speaking. We're inside him. Is this his head? Are we in his thoughts? Sato thought with a gulp at the idea of the kind of insanity currently occurring. Even if Zach was not saying it aloud, his thoughts and feelings could be felt by those wrapped in the darkness anyway. The audible screams just echoed those feelings that each of them felt in their own hearts as the Death passed through their revived bodies.

"Zach," Sero whispered. He can't. Sero lifted a hand and waved it through a trembling strand of darkness that shot away in the thinner mass after a giant dark whip heading into the distance at a thousand miles per hour. The feeling inside that one strand as it passed through Sero's palm made him gasp and bow his head down. He turned and looked towards Mineta who just shouted something at Tsuyu and was now shaking the crying girl by the shoulders in frustration. "Apocalypse?" That drug- he said he destroyed… Damn it, Zach. You fucking liar. Sero's eyes filled with tears, as he already felt like it was something like that based on how the dejected yet accepting strand of darkness felt when it passed through his palm.

"In Tokyo alone. There are too many. It's too much already. I can't…"

"You can't do it."

"Give up."

"It hurts."

"Please- STOP- AAAHHHRAAAAghghh…"

"COME BACK!"

Princess Aya stepped past her Royal Guards who had gathered around her once they saw all the dead coming back to life. She stared past the students in front of her and the heroes past them and out into the darkness. "Lifebringer," Aya whispered. Her hands held together in front of her chest. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. "Please."

Mineta dropped his arms from Asui's shoulders while the girl let tears fall freely just as Mineta started to as well. He clenched his eyes shut though, and the sound around him faded away other than Zach's screams he heard echoing over each other in the darkness above. He could feel the Death rippling in pain around his body. Zach, I feel it. What you're trying to do. It's really the whole world? There are tens of millions of people in Tokyo alone! You can't…

If anyone could, Mineta squinted his eyes back open. He felt the fears of the mass of Death that surrounded him. Those Death strands passed through his skull and through his brain, and he understood what Zach was thinking. All the fears, and pains, Mineta understood the one that surpassed them all. He doesn't want to fail. As much as this hurts, Mineta gasped in agony at the realization he was having. Everything he did for all that time meant nothing if he doesn't fix this. He can't though! He can't… "Do it," Mineta whispered.

Sero shook his head back and forth and then pressed his chin so tightly down into his chest. "Go, Zach," Sero seethed through his big teeth. He pursed his lips then curled them up at the corners and snapped his head up. "You can do it, Zach!" Sero screamed into the darkness above. He balled his fists at his sides and tried to stop the tears from flowing as he yelled straight at his friend who he knew could hear him, "It's up to you! You're the only one who can!"

Yaoyorozu spun her head and looked towards the rest of the students behind her. A lot of them were looking towards Sero in shock, only to spin to Mineta who rose his voice louder this time as he shouted out something on the same lines.

"Come back…"

"You can do it, Zach!" Kendo screamed into the sky.

"We know you can!" Hagakure shouted.

"Only you can," Ojiro gasped, failing to raise his voice any louder in the shout.

Zach's metaphysical teeth that he knew no location for ground together. I can! He thought, and the thought seemed to echo throughout his dark body so it was felt by the people at the Lodge. "Farther!" His deep voice boomed throughout the cloud. Zach's outer limits extended out as a wave away from the outskirts of Tokyo.

The people inside of Tokyo had their wounds sealed faster. Zach's dark body screamed out in all sorts of agony as millions of bodies in various states of damage revived. Most of them were only killed by Plague, but some had burned, some of their bodies had crushed in accidents after everyone started dying, and all those injuries hit Zach at once in giant condensed waves of pain. "Hahahha- HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA- gghrraa AAAHHHH!" His voice cracked in agonized wails mixed with maddened cackling.

"COME BACK!"

"YAAAAAoooOOWW!"

"COME BACK!"

"W-Wait," Momo whispered. Yaoyorozu looked back and forth at all the others who started shouting their encouragement louder and louder once they became aware that he could hear them. "Stop it," she said. Her voice cracked and tears spilled from her eyes in frustration at her friends around her. "Stop! You don't have to do this, Zach!"

"DO IT!" Another girl's voice screamed on Yaoyorozu's right side. She spun in shock to the sight of Ashido standing on top of some rubble with both hands cupped to her mouth. "You can do it Zach! You have to! You- You have to save the world!"

"Stop it!" Yaoyorozu yelled at Ashido who just slammed her watery eyes shut before opening her mouth and screaming it again.

Yaoyorozu looked around to see no one else was listening to her. She stared towards Kirishima who was confused by what everyone else was doing at first. He felt the change in the air though as the voices echoing out reached their friend. It's working. He needs us to tell him to do it. Kirishima's mouth opened but his lips trembled. He snapped his gaze back towards Yaoyorozu's desperate expression again that he could see through the thick darkness between them. If he does this, Kirishima thought. He could feel Zach's pain too.

Kirishima's fists balled at his sides in such a conflicted way. The whole world! I have to- as a hero! I… I need to tell him to, Kirishima closed his eyes and screamed out with his head pointed down at the ground. "DO IT! ZACH! BE A MAN AND- AND SAVE US ALL! RAAAAAA!" Kirishima screamed out in frustration after shouting that out. "DO ITTTT!"

"No," Yaoyorozu gasped, before snapping her head back up as she felt the entire mass of Death pulse and the amount of pain the cloud was in multiplied.

"Farther. Across the seas! Over the oceans… Farther!"

The coast of China appeared in Zach's vision. His wide-angle shot of the continent of Asia got closer. "How many people are in China? Hahaha… Ha-AAAHHHHHHH!"

"NOOOOOO!"

"COME BACK!"

Su-Jin cradled her son Tai in her arms. Tai had never been killed by Sleepless as the cure had been discovered in time to save them both. Her from her second death, and Tai from his first. There were a lot of people in the region of Gangwe who were still alive right now after receiving Zach Sazaki's help during the Sleepless Outbreak. The cities of the region were in chaos anyway as apocalyptic conditions had fallen on the world. Everyone still alive in the insanity of a world on fire full of dead bodies froze though, and they turned to the east then lifted their gazes. Su-Jin's look of despair wiped off her face and her shaking lips lifted into a smile as she held her boy up towards the incoming darkness.

Rolling in over the coast of China was a wave of darkness thousands of feet high. It crashed over the shores and into dozens of cities of ten million people or more. "COME BACK!" The pitch black cloud roared in a horrifying voice before laughing in hysteria and screaming in pain.

"I can see the world. FARTHER! I can feel EVERYONE- FARTHER AND FARTHER AND-"

"EEEHHahahaha! RRAuuugghh- RAAA- Aahh hahh… BAaahahaha AAAAHHHEeeeyyaaaa…"

"Lifebringer," Endeavor bit down then snapped his head up and yelled out. "Do it! Save the world, Lifebringer!"

Todoroki Shoto turned towards the street and spotted his father stopped just outside of the property. He looked the other way towards the Lodge behind him where more of his classmates were joining in with the shouts. He glanced regretfully towards Yaoyorozu who was the only one not joining in, instead shouting the opposite as the rest of them. He shook his head though and joined in with the rest, "Please, Zach. We know you can do it. You are the strongest hero. The greatest hero in the world. So please…"

"Save our world," Todoroki pleaded. "Even if it costs you…"

"Come back! Come back!"

"Modotte Koi!"

"Regresar!"

"Huílái!"

"Tornate tutti!"

Emilio Cambri's mother sobbed over the bodies of her son and grandsons. "Jesus. God. Lifebringer. Please save my boys-" she spun to the windows as shade blocked out the sun. It was much earlier in Italy than it was in Japan, and yet darkness fell over the world. The ninety-two year old woman looking remarkably fit for her age stumbled towards the windows and then opened them up.

Zach was moving too fast. Her opening the window meant nothing as he passed through the glass anyway. "Lifebringer! You came!"

"COME BACK!"

Darkness flooded through a city hidden in the mountains of Kazakhstan. The Death was so much more potent than ever before that it could bring people to life almost instantly after it hit them if it was focused on doing so.

"AHHHH! Ahh hahaaaa- AAHyyaaaaAAHH! RAAAA! COME BACK!"

"COME BACK!"

A small girl whose black hair was tied in braids sat up and looked behind her at her lighter-skinned adoptive grandparents who had taken her in. Both of them looked younger and healthier than they did when she collapsed, though it was difficult to tell that instantly with all the dark wisps in between them casting shadows on the elderly couple's faces.

Snow felt the darkness wrapping around her. She heard the screaming voices overlapping in the air and felt the pain but the conviction as well in the darkness. She also felt the feeling of understanding that came with injecting with Apocalypse. Knowledge Zach had of what the drug would do to him was impossible to hide from his own thoughts and feelings. The acceptance of what was going to happen when he finished this, was something that the girl who just stood back up in her house could feel while wrapped in that darkness.

Tears filled her eyes as she reached a hand up and tried curling it around one of the fading wisps. He won't be able to survive this?! She thought in panic at the shared feelings of agony and resignation. Her pointer finger touched a strand of Death that wrapped around it. Snow's voice cracked, and she gasped out in fear, "Dad?"

"Bobo! Get up man," Bobo's eldest brother hoisted him to his feet and shook his brother by his shoulders to get a good look at him. Bobo Cambri grinned big after a second when the realization had settled in. "You good-"

"ZACH!" Bobo yelled. He pulled out of his brother's arms and pounded a fist up into the air. "YEAH! FUCK YEAH!"

"You've got this, kiddo!" Emilio yelled out in agreement.

"Do it, Lifebringer!" Mobsters around Italy, and heroes too, cheered out for their friend and ally.

"Caterina!" Dover threw his large paws around the muscular woman who leaned back in surprise but then just returned the hug to the polar bear. Mother Russia lifted her gaze up and released the friendly polar bear who dropped onto all fours and lifted his own head up before dropping the smile from his face. "Oh no…" Dover was too smart of a smart-bear. As soon as his focus left the woman Zach brought back, his heart fell in his furry chest as he felt what Zach was feeling. "Zach!" Dover called out with tears filling his eyes.

"Lifebringer…" Mother Russia whispered.

"RRAaaaaahh AAHHH! AHH AHH AHHHHHEEEEYAAAA!"

"COME BACK!"

"POVERTATSYA!"

"VOLTAR!"

"COME BACK!"

Gentle opened his eyes and stared at the short young woman kneeling and crying over him. "What the-" Danjuro began.

"Gentle!" La Brava threw her arms around his neck and tackled him onto his back again. "Ahhh, hahhhh- ahhh! I thought I lost you! AHhhhh!"

"You alright?" Raylei helped Exodus sit up at her side. "I actually thought you were going to hold on for a second there," Raylei admitted, as Exodus had been refusing to die for several minutes even after Death had kicked the bucket.

Exodus did not respond to Raylei. He looked around from the floor next to the control station that Raylei knelt next to. The two of them stared at black wisps that floated around their bodies. Exodus turned to the glass windshield surrounding the bridge and just let out a single, "Wow," at the sight outside. The Death below them had bulged upwards at the top of the cloud to fill the Cloak, but now Zach could feel that all the dead inside the ship were alive. "Thank you, Commander," Exodus said as the wisps were getting thinner and fading away. "Thank you!"

"Zach?" Gentle sat back up again and shook his head around to try and get his coordination back. Gentle jumped up to his feet and placed La Brava down next to him. "Get Rebel on the line! Figure out what's going on. What the, current global situation is…" Gentle looked to the windshield himself and trailed off as he looked down past the sides of the glass and below their ship. It was possible they could have been above cloud cover, but no clouds were that black. He rose his gaze as far as his eyes could see on the horizon. "Holy…"

"…Shit," an American astronaut in the International Space Station whispered while floating back towards the windows. "You need to see this," he whispered in shock to the others who had broken down in despair after hearing the deaths of their command centers over the communications' lines and losing all contact with Earth.

The darkness around the students back at the Kaio Springs Lodge outside of Tokyo felt the wavering of the Death all around them. "Billions…" his voice was hoarser. It was harder to make out through the maddening screams of agony that had all blended together despite coming from all sides of them. As if he had a thousand mouths shouting at them from all sides that they could hear the constant chain of screaming.

"Zach!"

"You can do it!" Koda yelled into the sky. His eyes were closed and tears poured down his face. Koda forced his lips up into a smile though and snapped his bloodshot eyes open while shouting at the top of his lungs, "We know you can!"

Star-Spangled Man looked down at his fists he curled a few times in front of him. "I can…" he floated off the ground and swung his arms out for balance. He gave it back to me? Amazing! Where is All For One? Did Sazaki kill him already? That's, not what's most important here. The top American hero felt the wisps swirling around his arms that he held out for balance when he floated into the air. "You can do it," he whispered.

"Save us, Lifebringer!" Star-Spangled Man yelled up into the cloud. "Go farther! All the way to America too! PLEASE!"

In the International Space Station, the group of astronauts pressed up close to one wall of windows and stared down at the planet they were orbiting. The dark clouds had focused rolling to the west at first from Japan into China, but now they were spreading in both directions at the same time. The station had a good view over North America, and the astronauts could not make a sound at the sight of the rolling black clouds that came around both sides of the planet.

"Oh my God," a Russian astronaut finally gasped using the last of the breath in his lungs.

A recently depressed Chinese astronaut wiped some tears from below her eyes. "Can he do that?" She whispered. "What is he…"

"What is he doing?" A German man asked his fellow German astronaut next to him who just shook her head back and forth.

"That's really, Lifebringer," she just whispered in response.

"Is he… the cause? Is he killing the world?" One of them asked.

"No." The group glanced to their right as they heard a voice that had no doubt in her response. The Japanese astronaut on the station curled her lips up while watching the waves of Death reach the Americas. She looked down at their world with a bright smile full of faith in her nation's hero which was too contagious for anyone else to hold out their own doubts about what he was doing. Agaha Kiroumi did not look to her colleagues but did raise her voice as she told them in a tone of conviction, "He's bringing it back to life. That's who he is."

"Lifebringer. He's reviving the whole world…"

"Zach," a girl down on the ground in Japan whispered. The brown-haired girl with bright green eyes bit down on her bottom lip at the emotions she felt from the boy screaming for everyone to 'come back' louder than he was wailing in agony. Airi's hands stopped trembling to curl into fists at her sides. She forced a smile up on her face and kept the tears just in the corners of her eyes. "I know you can do it," she said into the cloud of darkness in front of her face. "Save the world, Zach. One more time."

"It's impossible," a dark voice snarled from the sky high above where Zach first started expanding. All For One yanked his leg back but lifted a corner of his lips up as the dark strands just licking at his foot did not feel like anything at all. "As I suspected. Plague has made me immune."

"RAAAAA!"

"UUauhhaa- OOwwaaa YAAAA!"

"GAH! FaaaAAhh-Raauugh!"

"So much pain. I bet you cannot even hear me," All For One remarked down at the top of the dark cloud rumbling just below him. "Can you attack me at the same time as you revive all of them? Or will splitting your focus stop you from this effort? Leave billions dead?" The villain lifted his right arm and muscles rippled out of his skin to cover it with Muscle Augmentation. He slammed it down and gripped his fingers into the Death that he grinned even more to see his hand actually getting a grasp of. All For One ripped up from the mass of Death and tore some of the darkness away that spread out and faded when the villain disconnected it from everything else.

More Death raged through the air and filled in the space All For One just tore out. "So much of it," All For One commented in true awe as he witnessed how little what he just did mattered.

"Come back. Come back…"

"The Apocalypse won't last forever though. You will be dead before long. Long before you save them all." All For One floated up higher than the top of the cloud and pointed his huge right muscular hand down at it. He snapped open his palm and aimed through the darkness. His smirk rose up higher at the corners, "And even the ones you saved won't last for long-"

All For One's head snapped up. He whipped his arm back from pointed down at the dark cloud below him. The clouds were swirling around and waving like water that All For One floated just over the surface of, and a huge splash of darkness ahead of him caught his attention. He lifted his focus straight to the green-haired hero rising from the sea of Death whose glare locked straight towards his true nemesis. Midoriya's skin all over his body was glowing as the energy coursed through him. His green hair had come out of his ponytail and waved around in the wind from moving this fast to the sky above the Death.

"One For All, 100 Percent," Midoriya pulled his elbows in at his sides. Just doing that pushed so much force out behind him that he shot into All For One in that same second. "San Diego Smash!" Midoriya's right knee planted into All For One's gut. The villain shot a few feet backwards. Ripples shot around the villain's body that Midoriya's eyes darted down to from the creepy look on the villain's face that lost the shocked look mixed with pain that it had for a second.

The right corner of All For One's lips curled into a disturbing smirk. "Is that all?" All For One wondered to the boy who flew up out of the darkness and attacked so confidently. All For One's skin was red from the Muscle Augmentation, but Midoriya also noticed the green tint on it. He had heard the report about Intanzo's Quirk that they all focused so much on after the Battle of Tokyo since Intanzo was the most dangerous villain to escape that day. Even though the official name was changed to 'Inorganic Matter Control,' Endeavor said that Intanzo could alter his own body. What did he just do? Is it shock absorption? Nullification? Or something else? No. No no- Did he just condense all of Muscular's Quirk into one spot in that instant? Then he redistributed it across his body to dilute the force- even going so far as to putting the muscles behind his back to prevent the forward force…

"You have an analytical mind. You think much more than your brash predecessor did," All For One commented as he watched the young hero try to figure out the combination of Quirks he just used for his own defense. All For One's body started to distort though after that comment. Midoriya Floated backwards a little and lifted his stunned gaze after All For One's head as the villain grew in size. Bones protruded and grew longer with skin stretching out over them. The red muscles rippling out of his skin bulged over both of his arms and straight over the front of his torso. The top half of his head glowed red while every finger on both of his hands turned to steel and started spinning like drills. "Tell me, Midoriya Izuku." All For One glared down at the boy a quarter of his size who just balled his fists and glared back at the daunting enemy full of powerful Quirks who could handle him at 100%.

"If I didn't do it, do you really think Sazaki wouldn't have? Sooner or later?" All For One wondered. Midoriya stared back up at the villain and did not respond, instead examining his huge body and figuring out a plan of attack. The hero needed to consider the appearance of his enemy now and how his last hit was taken, as well as how All For One fought him back before his death. All For One saw Midoriya ignoring him but just continued anyway, "He had Apocalypse at the ready. He was right though. He could have destroyed this world without it. I saw. That look, from the first time I saw it."

"I knew what that thing was going to become. I saw the potential for this kind of power but stayed with Shigaraki in order to torment All Might. I should have taken that little monster as a pupil myself though. Turned him into the real successor. Maybe, I still would have had hope for this world-"

"Zach, would never have become your disciple," Midoriya's fists clenched and made the dark sea below push downwards so waves of it shot out in all directions away from them. The Death underneath them trembled from the pressure as Deku's body tensed up and his green hair waved behind his head. "You're wrong, All For One. Zach's more human than you, and he never would have helped you. He never would have become evil like you! Never." Midoriya swung his left arm forward while All For One was opening his mouth to respond.

Black lines shot off of Deku's fake fingertips. The Blackwhips wrapped around All For One's huge body, but All For One spiraled into a black tornado of flapping bats looking like wind that the Blackwhips passed through. The villain flew forward while his separated body came back together, and Midoriya flew ahead and twisted his body, slamming both fists at where the villain was recombining himself again. All For One made one of his fists first and punched too, but Deku ducked below it expecting where the punch was coming from as his Danger Sense warned him just in time.

Drac's power doesn't allow him to remain completely broken-up for long, Midoriya analyzed after connecting with the villain's body again.

This time he sent All For One flying back through the air much farther. He didn't get his guard back up while in half-bat form.

Midoriya snapped his body backwards and dodged below a red beam of light that got too close to his chest that he felt the burning sensation. All For One flew after his own laser beams and swung his right hand down with the spinning drill fingertips towards Midoriya's stomach. Midoriya had already snapped his body backwards, but he used the strength of One For All along with Float and kicked his right leg in a flying twisting motion into All For One's elbow. The arm slamming down at him got snapped to the side across the front of AFO's body and into his other arm, while the finger-drills were still spinning.

The drills tore into his flesh on his other arm, but All For One had far too many Muscles covering up the arm that the drills barely pierced through. That pierced arm punched across his body back at Midoriya who tried to finish his flip and follow up with both fists into AFO's chest as he flew forward to close the gap. He could see All For One's punch coming, but he was warned about the incoming kick too by his Danger Sense, and yet dodging up from that leg was going to put him directly in front of his enemy's face that was glowing red again. Midoriya reached his left arm out and caught the inside of AFO's bloody right arm that the villain's left hand was ripping back out of in that same moment. Due to the villain's larger body, Midoriya could kick down his right foot onto the top of the supervillain's lifting left leg, and duck his head back down quickly to avoid the red beams flying just overhead and through some strands of his hair.

Midoriya pulled his head back while reaching his other arm to catch All For One's left hand the villain tried to curve back now and cut through Deku's side. He caught underneath All For One's fist and still winced as he used his right hand, and his flesh fingers got nicked by the spinning drills of AFO's left hand when he caught it. The villain's Muscle Augmentation rippled and doubled the size of the villains' arms, but Deku slammed his head back forwards into AFO's unguarded chest while kicking down his other foot into the villain's lifting right leg this time. Midoriya's right hand released the villain's fist he had caught the bottom of, but he flicked his hand after the villain and shot Blackwhips out of his fingers that wrapped around AFO's back before he could separate too far.

Deku yanked his right arm back towards him while filling with One For All and using Float to speed up too. He reversed All For One's momentum towards him while speeding up insanely fast towards the villain who swung both arms into the path of the hero who had to flip in midair over the swings and use a kick instead at lower momentum. He twisted away from a red beam of light then ducked as a long spike of bone shot out of All For One's right shoulder-blade as he was flying around the villain's back but close to try and get another hit in. He ducked then had to fly away farther as similar spikes shot out all the way down All For One's spine and would have impaled him if the stabbing feeling of his Danger Sense did not give him a warning in time.

He wrapped the villain up in Blackwhips and started swinging him across the air hard enough to try and disorient him for a follow-up, but midway through the swing All For One's midsection ripped apart into a black mass of flapping wings that quickly returned to normal once the Blackwhips lost their hold on him. All For One reached out and grabbed the Blackwhips with his left hand that the fingers turned back to normal on, then reddened as the hand grew into a giant muscly fist around the Blackwhips that Midoriya did not cut off in time. AFO pulled towards himself before Deku released his own Quirk, and Deku went flying at the villain who slammed his other fist towards the hero whose momentum had him flying too fast towards him. Deku's body contorted in a way looking impossible, but his momentum meant nothing when he had Float and could lift his body suddenly against the physics and forces pulling him at All For One's right arm that he passed just over instead then dug his left hand into and gripped on through the muscly covering.

Midoriya had All For One grabbed by one arm, and he slammed his other down while AFO twisted and punched his own left fist up with the spinning drills at the end of it. Midoriya's right fist collided with All For One's left, and Midoriya made the bet that his One For All would be strong enough to break apart his enemy's spinning metal fingers rather than the drills slicing through his own hand. He was half right. All For One reeled backwards while Deku released the villain's right arm and flew back the other way. The drills of AFO's left hand broke apart and blood was spilled behind them, but more blood poured out of Deku's right hand. All of the teenage hero's knuckles were torn up, and he could barely curl his fingers at all while his whole arm vibrated from the twisting of those drills against his breaking bones a second ago. Midoriya panted over and over and focused on All For One's left arm that was vibrating as well from his punch that knocked the villain backwards finally. All For One's arm stopped shaking first though, as the Augmented Muscles clearly absorbed most of the damage.

Midoriya curled his left hand into a fist and rose it in front of him. He lifted his left arm up in front of his face with his fist pointed at the sky then pulled down so his elbow came to his chest and his fist stopped in front of his chin, revealing the heroic smile on his face that did not match the despair in his tear-filled eyes. His tone matched the smile more than the pain in his eyes though, as he said, "Zach told me this arm would be better than my old one ever was." Midoriya twisted his body sideways and pulled that fist back. "Let's put that to the test!"

Deku shot back at All For One who raced at his enemy as well and collided with him. The two of them bounced off each other then collided again and again in the sky above the shaking dark cloud below that had expanded from their location to cover the entire planet.

Zach felt the vibrations and heard the voices above his Death back outside of Tokyo, but he could not focus on them in the slightest as his Death now covered the entire planet Earth. Darkness had rolled out and covered everything in the world. His voice sounded more scattered and broken-up than ever. "…Ahahahaaa… I can feel you. See you. All of you- AHcggh- RRAAAA COME BACK! Please- ack ggaaaa…. ahhhh, haa haahhhh… please. PLEASE! AHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAAAA!"

The sickening screams alternated between cries of agony, and pleading calls for people to come back to life. Zach's voice echoed in every inch of the darkness. The cloud shook as Zach gasped, "I can feel it all." His voice cracked. In the darkness with his voice overlapping over screams and whimpers and begging requests, Zach's voice came through with what sounded like deeper thoughts that they could all hear being inside of his mind. "A trillion places at once. I can feel- aahh-" Zach's voice seemed to get caught in some metaphysical throat, or his intangible lungs just could not handle speaking any longer while in the amount of agony that he was taking in.

A plane in the middle of the Pacific rose up over the surface it had sunk under. Death rolled through the ocean and revived the fish floating next to dead whales and dolphins. Squid revived with the seaweed and kelp around them turning green again. Coral reefs regained color as scuba divers started to move at the bottom of the tubes they dangled from. The sailors on the fishing boats and cargo ships stood back up. Ones who had fallen overboard floated to the surface and were placed on the decks, as were passengers of flights who the Death carried out of their sinking planes and revived on their ways to the closest ships. The Death pulling out the bodies from fallen planes also knew where the closest ships and landmasses were. Every piece knew what the rest of it knew.

It was all part of Zach. The being of Death could feel the entire world. See the whole world. Bodies floating in shallow water were placed on shore and revived on the sand. Seagulls flapped their wings and rose into the air and the crabs scurried back into the water. Fish swam back under the surface, and dogs ran to their owners and licked their faces, and zoo animals all over the world stood back up inside the dark clouds that surrounded them all. "Everything. Everyone. I see them all. Come back. Please."

"Come back. I can't- ahh haaahhhh… AHHHH! COME BACK! Come back. COME BACK!"

Black mist stronger than it looked pulled rubble and broken vehicles off of crushed people. Precarious hanging objects were removed from above sidewalks that Zach laid reviving bodies on top of. Millions of individual tendrils moved at the same time to create clearings to revive the billions of people that he was bringing back all at once. "I can see… a world. Dead. Please… Come back. AHHHHHH! All of you. Everyone. Every last one. Not you, or you. Mysti, Faith… I'll let you die now…"

Zach's Death traveled down through the depths of Tartaros. Not an early target on his list, his Death did wind up traveling into the prison and the cells of the dead prisoners throughout. Darkness was reviving them all, but it hesitated around the psych ward and two villains in particular who the Death pulled away from. "I've made you suffer enough. Everyone else… Come back. PLEASE! Come back."

"What is going on?! Shigaraki!" Kaiyu slammed his hands on the glass in front of him and screamed at the smirking villain on the other side.

Neo was sobbing and Edo held her in his arms against his chest. The prison guards revived by Zach Sazaki spun their heads from this deep deep level of Tartaros that they had gone to when they saw on their security monitors that Shigaraki Tomura was still alive when everyone else had died. The guards spun and watched as the guard shift who had been down here before the world ended were moving again. Their skin regained color. Neo's tears stopped falling and she just stared around her in shock as darkness surrounded the entire bottom floor of Tartaros.

"Z-Zach?" Neo whispered in utter disbelief.

"Sazaki," Shigaraki snarled. "SAZAKI!" He screamed in rage towards the glass, thrashing around in his binds but failing to get out of them while darkness filled his room and surrounded him too.

"I will not allow this world to fall, Shigaraki. Ahhahaha, HAHAHAHA Heeee! AhhahahahaAAAA! AAAwwwaoooooeee- YAAAAAHhh-"

Laughter turned into agonized screaming and back again. The madness of the world's savior was clear to everyone listening. More and more people standing up again started to notice what the Death around them felt like. All the people who had ever complained about Zach Sazaki not reviving more people suddenly felt what it was like for him to revive. They could sense the knowledge of that pain, but not the actual feeling of pain itself. It still stunned them though just in the understanding alone of what he was going through.

"You can do it, Zach!" Sero yelled out, his lungs nearly giving out on him as he just kept screaming over and over at the top of his lungs to make sure his friend would hear it. "DO IT! We know you can!"

"So many… millions… billions…"

"Go Zach! SAVE US!"

"You can do it! Please! Don't stop!"

"Aahhhh AAHhhaaaaaa- ARRAaaaaggnn- ggaaaaa!"

More painful than anything I can imagine, Bakugo flinched as a scream reverberated around his head sounding so agonized he had to slam his eyes shut for a second. He shook his head back and forth. "Don't you dare stop," Bakugo snarled. All For One is up there. Deku's fighting him. I should… Bakugo bit down harder. Deku can do that on his own, Bakugo thought. I know he can do it. I know Deku's got that handled, but this? I don't know if he can. Not unless, Bakugo ground his teeth back and forth. "Keep going!" He yelled, and he felt that darkness around him respond in getting less shaky and steadying itself out.

He could see the darkness acknowledging his words. "Don't you stop! YOU HEAR ME?!" Bakugo screamed. "DON'T LET UP FOR EVEN ONE SECOND, OR I'LL BEAT THE CRAP OUT OF YOU!"

"RAAAAAAAAAAA!" Zach screamed in defiance of his own limits. Bakugo screamed it again even louder at him hearing that response through the darkness around him that filled with so much pain that he knew Zach just revived so many more people.

"It's okay- ahh," Yaoyorozu gasped. "Stop Zach. Please, it's okay- it's… it's fine if you can't!" She called out in a broken tone. Her eyes clenched shut. "Won't you listen to me?" She asked in a hoarse voice unable to reach the volume that the people screaming over her were bellowing out their encouragement in. "You don't have to… please. I can't-" Her bowed head lifted back up. Tears filling her eyes poured down ceaselessly. "I don't want to lose you, Zach. Not again. I- I can't! Please… don't die."

Jirou clenched her eyes shut as she approached her best friend's back. She pulled her head back but then bowed it and gripped her chest with one hand in such intense regret for what she was about to do. "Zach!" Jirou screamed. Yaoyorozu felt her own heart rip in half while she turned and looked back to Jirou who made eye contact with her in despair. Jirou closed her eyes again though and then screamed against her best friend's wishes, "You have to do it! Save the world, Zach! I know, I know… that you can do it."

Once she said it, Jirou dropped down to her knees. Her face bowed and she sobbed but did not take back what she told him.

"KEEP IT UP! ZACH!" Kirishima roared into the sky.

Kotsumura and Reika stood outside of a restaurant in Yutapu where the two had been out on a date before they died and subsequently revived. They each screamed together at the darkness around them, "Do it! ZACH!"

"Revive the world!"

"Don't give up," Dendo whispered from the windows of his hospital room where he woke up in. His arms were perfectly fine, as were his legs that he stood on without issue at the open windows he leaned his head out of. "You hear me?! DON'T GIVE UP! KEEP REVIVING UNTIL YOU'VE SAVED US ALL!" Dendo begged.

A pediatric ward in a New Delhi hospital full of terminally ill children flooded with Death that revived them all. The diseases ravaging their organs were gone. Death swirled around the dead cancer cells but avoided them and only revived the healthy ones. Holes in livers and lungs sealed up. Patients in the ER of the same hospital who had been brought in due to a truck collision sat up on the hospital beds while the doctors and nurses who had collapsed around them all got up as well. Their patients no longer had any injuries. A scream of panic made the doctors spin to see a mortician running away down the hallway just outside the Emergency Room. After all, every single cabinet in his mortuary had been opened up and the patients inside them were getting out of the freezers.

"Yahoo!"

"Look at me!"

"I've never felt so alive!"

Old people bounced around a nursing home in Stockholm where the wheelchair-bound pensioners were throwing their wheelchairs and walkers out the windows. The youthful old-timers suddenly in the peak of health cheered all together while jumping up in the air, "LIFEBRINGER!"

A young teenage boy shot in a liquor store robbery in Algeria patted down his chest and shook his head around in shock to find no wound under the hole in his shirt. He turned to the store clerk then to the police officers who had come to investigate the crime scene after the crook got away. All of them had died, and all were back to life again. Several blocks away and hiding behind a dumpster, a petty thief turned murderer in the past hour opened his eyes and gasped out in shock. A dark wisp lifted up the pistol at his side and broke it into a hundred pieces. "Repent," a soft voice hissed in the darkness swirling around the criminal's head, before zipping off into a thicker black wind flying through buildings on either side of him.

"Come back."

"It's okay."

"Come back."

"AAAYHAAAaeeeeeeEEEAAAHHH!"

"OOoooaaaaHHH! EEeeeYyyaaaAAAA!"

"COOOOMMMMEEE BACCCCKKKKKK!"

"I can feel it all. All of them dying at once. Nine billion people. And every animal. And every plant. I can feel them all… dying." Outside of the collapsed Kaio Springs Lodge, the students listening to Lifebringer's voice looked around at the grass regaining its green color. Trees on the lawn knocked down during the fight against All For One were lifting back up. Shards of wood flew towards the larger trunks that lifted over the stumps they had been snapped off of. The wood reconnected, leaves filled with color, and the trees healed.

A forest fire in Colorado was put out. Firefighters in the midst of fighting the flames who were revived first watched as the inferno before them was smothered by the wave of darkness. That darkness lifted out planes and helicopters that were helping fight the fire as well, and Death revived the pilots and firemen inside the burnt-out remains of those vehicles.

A school bus a few hundred miles away from the fires was lifted back up onto its wheels after it had fallen on its side when its driver collapsed. The high schoolers inside it started calling out the name of the hero they knew was responsible. They could see the darkness all around them and heard him shout in English to 'Come back!' The teenagers cheered his hero name, as did the bus driver who yelled at the top of her lungs, "Thank you! LIFEBRINGER!"

"Bodies from crashed planes. Crushed and burned. Piles of bones and ash." Zach's voice around the Lodge he had gone to for a dance earlier that night spoke in clearer terms than the screaming and wailing that was also still audible around them. It sounded more like this was only being spoken near them though, the ones who were yelling at him the loudest to keep it up. His voice filled the ears of his classmates who cried out at him to continue, while they continued to cry themselves. "The pain is worse than just a revival from Plague. They all burnt up after they died. Hundreds. Thousands of them. All at once. Incinerated. Every inch of their bodies. Atomized. Regenerating, tens of thousands of… the burns are- simultaneously, it's unimaginable. Ahh- I can't-"

"YOU'VE GOT THIS!"

"WE KNOW YOU CAN!"

Ashido screamed out while slamming her chin down into her chest, "YOU HAVE TO, ZACH!" Just stop already. "KEEP GOING!" Mina screamed aloud, holding back her more sincere desire to shout at him to stop it. It's enough. Why can't you feel that way? Why, are you so good? Ashido felt shivers as the dark wisps ran along her arms and down her spine.

"…all over the world. Every insect. Every human. Every plant… I can feel you all." Zach's voice sounded insane.

Mineta's eyes started shaking and his voice caught in his throat at the sound of Zach's tone right there. The idea of what his friend must have been seeing was too hard for any of them to comprehend. The mere notion that his body currently transcended all physical matter was by itself unbelievable. He was passing through everything. Lifting every object with ease. He had seemingly no limits of strength. He's, like God, Mineta thought while pulling his head back in shock. Life and Death. Omnipotence. I mean, omnipresence?! He's EVERYWHERE?

He can see us all? Hagakure wondered. Wisps wrapped around them, but it was more like they were in a full mist of darkness itself. She stared into the dark swirls directly in front of her face. Is this, an eye? I can hear his voice from it, but it's also everywhere else too. Hagakure winced and clenched her eyes shut as just trying to imagine it alone was hurting her head. More tears spilled from her eyes as she imagined that. And in every inch of that body, he's in pain isn't he? It has to be making him crazy! "Please Zach, it's…" she stopped herself. I can't! Tears fell even faster from her invisible eyes. "It's… all up to you," she whispered, cursing herself for doing so even as the words escaped her lips.

"You are young. You have an entire life ahead of you. All this pain in your youth may fade over time in this world you created…" All Might's eyes were closed so tightly. He saw the young man breaking down to him about his fears over Ares and his future back after the trial to determine if he was Death. Tears flowed down the teacher's face at the thought of the advice he gave then, and yet he still had to force his lips apart from how hard he was pursing them and trying to stay quiet. "Sazaki," All Might whispered. "I know you can do this. You have to do this. Please. We believe in you." I am so sorry.

"I believe in you," All Might said, raising his voice louder. He tilted his head up and smiled wide while yelling out at the top of his lungs, "LIFEBRINGER!"

"You've got it Zach!" Sero called out, his smile gone now.

"RAAabbbrr-bruuUaaaahh AAAHhhh-"

"I know you can!" Sero shouted over the sounds of Zach's screams surrounding him. Only you ever could. The fact that you can even handle this kind of consciousness… I mean, I can't even picture- Sero's head hurt trying to put himself in Zach's shoes to at least try and understand what he was asking of his friend. It's just you. Nine billion people? You can see them all? Feel us all? And… and I definitely feel you, responding to our shouts! Somehow you can hear us all too? At the same time? Can you separate your thoughts? I don't know. I don't… understand.

"I love you, Zach!" Yaoyorozu screamed up into the darkness. Jirou and Ashido spun towards their friend close to them who had tears falling from her chin just like the other two did. Yaoyorozu shook her head back and forth and yelled, "So please! You don't need to do this! You can stop!" Momo screamed. "Please!"

Jirou brought both hands to her chest and squeezed over her heart as hard as she could while still down on her knees. She gasped out in agony of her own, sensing the painful feelings coming off of the dark wisps that told her what Zach was going through right now. Seeing the look on Momo's face. Hearing Zach's screams. It was all just too much. She opened her mouth to finally scream with Yaoyorozu…

"The world will burn if we lose." Jirou stopped herself from calling out. It's why he did it. Why he was able to fight all that time no matter how bad it got. No matter how many of his soldiers died in his arms. He left me, he even left you, Jirou lifted her gaze back towards the side of her best friend's distraught face. Her lips closed again despite Yaoyorozu just screaming out more for Zach to stop this already.

He left us for that. He was able to leave us, no matter how much that hurt him to do, because he knew he could save people. He became Death to save this world. And now, more than last time, he really became Death. Death itself. Jirou bowed her head and took in a deep breath. "You're really something, you know that?" Jirou wondered. Her voice was soft compared to all the screaming around her, but she believed the darkness surrounding her face could hear what she said.

"BE A MAN! SEE IT THROUGH!" Kirishima roared.

"Don't you stop," Bakugo hissed. "I know you can do this. So don't you dare stop. Dig deep! AND DO IT!" His fingernails dug into his palms and drew blood that dripped through the cracks between his fingers. His fists curled even tighter though and he screamed out even louder, "YOU NEVER LOSE, RIGHT?! YOU'RE NOT STARTING TODAY! GOOOOO!"

Midoriya Izuku balled his left hand into a fist in such a way that he heard the creaking of the joints in the metal. He felt the grinding of his bones against the cyborginization of parts inside his shoulder that connected the prosthetic to his body. While his right hand was broken and dripping blood, his left arm had lost all the fake skin on it but remained strong in appearance. The steel was smooth and un-dented. "Zach was right," he told his enemy who floated ahead of him after their last collision that separated the two.

A trail of blood slid down Midoriya's face from the left corner of his lips, while a similar trail spilled out the right corner of All For One's wrinkled frown. The top half of All For One's body no longer had any fabric remaining to cover it up. His rippling red muscles would have blocked it anyway. The villain's whole body above his waist quadrupled in size after he already grew himself using his many Quirks into the monstrosity he looked like now. The top half of his scarred face glowed red and the spikes of bones that continued to extend so that they protruded from his bulging muscles flared an evil green color that pulsed and tinted the sky around him in its glow.

All For One opened his mouth to speak to his enemy who stopped ahead of him and glanced down once more at the sounds of the agony coming from the darkness. When Midoriya's gaze lifted again though, All For One said nothing to him. No mocking words. No taunts. The villain faced a hero who looked back at him with an expression changed by what he just saw and heard. Midoriya squinted, his harsh expression faltering for a moment as he reconsidered. Zach's right, he countered the hesitation he felt.

"I don't think what All Might did was a mistake," Midoriya admitted aloud. His left fist that he had curled stopped shaking after only just starting to tremble a second ago when he considered what he was about to do. "You don't kill someone because of a potential that they could be dangerous in the future. You were defeated. Unconscious. Zach thinks you should have been killed right then in Camino. But, if more people thought like that, like him, then the fact that Zach could have one day destroyed the world would have made him a target of every hero. It would have been 'right' to kill him, just because of the threat that he might one day pose. And I refuse to accept that. I'm not fixing a mistake. That's not…"

Midoriya took in a deep breath. He released it slowly then opened his eyes halfway but glared at All For One in such a way that the villain could not be mistaken. It was not hidden either. Midoriya looked at the villain and showed him with his gaze what he intended to do. As if to make sure that All For One was not surprised by it, though All For One questioned if that was really his intention. Rather, it seemed as if the hero needed to make the decision consciously first and declare his reasons to himself rather than just do it in the moment. "Deku," All For One spoke. He declared the hero's name as Deku stared him down furiously, but not hatefully.

Deku was angry, but the rage was not uncontrolled wrath like he had seen far too many times from his friend. "But," Midoriya continued. "This is about preventing a second attempt. Stopping you, and punishing… prison is for rehabilitation. Containment. Zach wasn't always correct in denying people their right to be sent to prison. I see though, why he had to with Ares. As I look at you now. Over a dead world. A world you killed!" Midoriya's body did not look to move, and yet All For One flew backwards as he felt a massive force push into his body.

Midoriya bit down and he asked while wind flew around him so fast that his hair was whipping all around his head, "Do you hear him? Do you feel what I feel he's thinking, right now?!" Deku screamed at his enemy.

"He is insane," All For One replied. "His insanity is useful to you, so you-"

"It's not, 'insanity!'" Deku yelled back. "It's not that he doesn't care about the pain! He knew what it would mean, and he was afraid to do it. That's not insanity! He knew exactly what it meant. What he would go through. What he's going through right now! It's not that it didn't scare him. That he was just so eager to be a hero, or save us all- he knew and feared all that would come with it." Tears filled Deku's furious eyes that lost some of the self-righteous look in them. In that moment, as the righteousness left Deku's eyes that looked so angry, and accepting of some darker look in them that he had never once in his life allowed to come over him, All For One felt another feeling he had rarely felt in his life before.

That's not dread! The villain thought in terror. Deku's eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared at his enemy. All For One shot forward and let out a roar of anger due to what he knew he just felt which upset him so at the upstart hero's ability to make him feel such fear.

The monster five times his size with an arm easily as large as Deku's entire body did not scare the hero though. Deku did not let out a roar of fury like his enemy did. Nor did he start flying at All For One at the same time. He took in a deep breath through his nose. Then he breathed it out while every muscle on his body tensed up. His bloody right hand curled into a fist, but his left arm was the one that shook as he twisted his body and pulled that arm back.

Booom! A shockwave shook the cloud of Death. The screaming people down at the Lodge snapped their heads straight up as they heard the shockwave sounding like a massive explosion, all just from Deku flying towards All For One. His enemy who had started flying towards him first was not yet at the halfway point between where the two had just floated apart from one another. Deku closed the distance quicker. So fast that All For One again went back on his previous thought of how Lifebringer had moved even faster than Deku, as now it was Deku whose sudden appearance directly in front of him was too fast for him to even start lowering his head down towards.

All For One's arm pulled in slightly. Deku's speed had so surpassed his own that despite how many Quirks he had combined into his own punch that he was starting, Deku avoided his fist entirely. Bones started piercing out of the inner arm towards the boy passing by it. That right arm curled in. And Muscle Augmentation bulged in front of All For One's chest.

"1,000,000 PERCENT…" The steel of Midoriya's arm creaked but held together. It glowed bright even as his shoulder at the top of the prosthetic started bleeding profusely. Deku bit down as his whole body screamed in pain. His eyes locked on his enemy's though as he slammed his left fist forward.

"VECTOR SWITCH-"

"PLANETARY SMASHHHHHH!" Deku slammed his left fist into the bulging muscles that shot out of All For One's chest. Bones pushed out of the end of the new appendage that shot forward from the villain's torso because Deku had avoided his enemy's punch. All For One's body altered. The bones that curved inside of All For One's chest and extended pushed out of his bulging muscles spraying blood. Drills spun to life at the end of those pointed bones, but Deku's fist smashed through them. The drills and bones shattered. The muscles dented in and more blood splashed in all directions, but not just from the appendage sticking out of All For One's chest.

Midoriya's shoulder ripped apart. "AHhhhhh!" Midoriya screamed in agony as the force into his most powerful punch ever pushed back into his prosthetic. The prosthetic tore through the connection on his shoulder. His tendons tore. His bones near the prosthetic's upper arm broke, and yet Blackwhips shot out of Midoriya's chest and from his shoulder socket. They dug into the arm as it was cracking. As the steel bent and crinkled, Midoriya's Blackwhips held it to his body to replace the surgeries. The dark whips of his own combination Quirk wrapped around his bones and held the cracking things together. The One For All coursing through him flooded into the part of his body that he was barely keeping together, and Deku stopped screaming.

He bit down through the pain and snapped his bloodshot eyes back open. All For One had gasped out himself. Despite the surprise of his 'vector flip' to Deku who was not expecting so much of his own power redirected at him, One For All was overpowering. All For One's stolen Quirk was weaker than Deku's. The villain flew off the end of the fist, his body soaring backwards. "Ack-" One For All coughed, blood that spilled into his lungs lurching out as his body hunched forward. Deku's blow as so strong that a trench in the dark cloud below them stretched farther than the hero could see behind his villain who finally stopped flying backwards. The smaller circular waves of Death shooting away from the deep trench past Deku's punch came from the shockwaves of his movement and the swing of his arm alone.

Deku held his left arm together with Blackwhips. He pointed his legs back up behind him. He Floated himself horizontally over the top of the cloud and pulled his left arm back again. All For One was hunched forward. His head lifted though as another series of black waves rippled away below him twice as large as the ones created by the previous shockwaves. The fact that those waves were larger meant the speed at which Deku had moved was even quicker than before. He was still processing that while raising his head. There was no time for defense this time. Not even for his nerves to react. No conscious or subconscious use of his Quirk could protect him. Deku's shockwave from his initial movement could not keep up with himself to hit the villain who the hero's left fist was uppercutting towards. 1 million percent… "UNIVERSAL…"

The wind that blew out below Deku forced a massive hole into the Death. Just from him bending his elbow as he swung his arm up into the villain's stomach. The red muscles still covering most of All For One's upper body ripped apart. They shredded in the force from Midoriya's fist connecting with All For One's stomach. Deku's cracking fist did not stop on the villain's stomach though, as it dug up through All For One's chest too. The force from the end of the fist pushed through the villain's insides and up into his neck and his head too. The wind coming off of Midoriya's left arm was so condensed it looked like a white aura, which transferred upwards with the force of Deku's blow to encompass all of All For One's body. "SMAAAAAAAAAAASSHHHHH!" Midoriya roared his lungs out. His body could not handle the force. More bones broke. His fake left arm tore to pieces. Blackwhips waved around out of his left shoulder that snapped backwards from recoil. All the bones in that shoulder broke into pieces that the Blackwhips inside of Deku's body failed to hold together this time.

The agony of the Smash that tore his new prosthetic into pieces and broke the hero's body, was somehow the lesser of all the pains Deku felt in that moment. His body fell backwards with no control. He used no Float on his drop with no control out of the air, back-first, blood raining around his body. His squinted eyes stared up into the fading white of the powerful force from One For All that had turned his enemy into dust. The force so powerful had kept going into the upper atmosphere. Midoriya was looking up, so he did not see the black clouds below him spinning around where he was dropping. He only noticed once he fell through the top layer of Death that he was in the middle of a spinning funnel, caused from the wind that pushed off his body behind him even while he punched the other way. Aiming straight up so as not to harm the planet, he had still created such a force behind his body that the whole of the Death storm below had turned into a hurricane with an eye he fell into.

Deku noticed the spinning dark clouds start to fill in the space around him. He was not too focused though on them. His squinted eyes closed after staring into the space where his enemy was missing from. I killed him. It wasn't for revenge though. It wasn't! As much, as I deserve to hate him, Midoriya clenched his eyes shut even harder, trying to stop himself and failing as water still squeezed from the outer corners of his eyes. He fell into the darkness. The waves of Death wrapped around him. They pushed through his bloody and broken body that stopped falling as fast once the Death surrounded him.

It was a cloud, and yet Midoriya slowed down while falling through it. His speed decreased. Midoriya floated with less gravity down through the Death that caught him softly and seemingly in a fashion so as to not jolt him in any way. He looked around again. The fall was so slow that it was too obvious to him that it was not happening just because of the thickness of the cloud. "Z-ach?" Midoriya did not realize how hurt his chest was until he tried to speak and found his lungs and throat in agonizing pain. His eyes spilled the water that had already piled up in the corners for a different reason though, as he heard a voice respond.

"Thank you, Midoriya." The voice was soft.

Midoriya was not the only one who heard a softer voice now. The people screaming out down around the ruins of the Kaio Springs Lodge quieted down, because it was getting harder to hear the screams and laughter from the dark cloud around them.

Ashido was panting but closed her mouth and did not open it back up to scream again. She glanced up and then around her in all directions. It's, getting thinner, she noticed.

"I used, the a-arm, you gave me. Your company-" Deku tried speaking in a raspy tone.

"I know, it was hard for you to do," Zach's voice ignored what Deku was trying to tell him. Zach's friend trying to support him, to make him feel like he had been the reason that Midoriya was even able to succeed, winced and cried his tears out harder as Zach apologized to him. "I'm sorry. I'm glad, though. You can do it when it's necessary. Only then, but you can. You showed me that. Thank you. Thank you, Deku."

"Please, Zach," Midoriya whispered while still falling out of the air, now in view of others who stared towards the hero being lowered slowly down by the only thick strands of Death left in the area. Midoriya was adjusted near the surface and placed down softly on his butt, again without even a jolt to cause him any pain. Distant screams from thinner portions of the cloud reached the hero who heard that same voice speaking to him. One consciousness was experiencing so much at the same time. So much pain. So many sensations at once. It made Midoriya curl his head down and clench his teeth at the thought. "Please…" Midoriya whispered, feeling the thick strands breaking apart around him once they had placed him down.

He sounds so satisfied with me, Deku thought in grief. Maybe if I didn't do it. If I didn't show him that he could leave it to me, he would have kept himself going! Maybe… he wouldn't have trusted me, with the world. "Ahhhaaaa," Midoriya sobbed.

"…I didn't need to worry that you couldn't." Deku heard the voice even quieter in his head. That you might let AFO live, risk this apocalypse happening again. You knew that it was right this time. Or at least, that it needed to be done."

"Mm!" Deku made a noise of affirmation from the back of his throat. He lifted his head and opened his mouth to say something else, but the words caught in his throat. The thickest strands broke apart around him. Zach's voice was more distant and fading away, and Midoriya stared through the breaking thick tendrils towards the cloud above. It was no longer around him. And the darkness he saw above was not pitch black anymore either. He could see a star up there.

Others looking around snapped their heads up as they spotted the clear sky above the Death which meant that there were gaps in it now. It had been such a gradual thinning of the dark cloud around them that most did not even realize that the wisps were not as condensed around here anymore.

"So close… still, so many," Zach's voice echoed through even the thinner wisps still around the U.A. senior class.

Sero bit down. "Don't, let up," he whispered. "You're almost there!"

"You can do it!"

"Please, Zach," Midoriya whispered again. He opened his mouth, but he swallowed back the plea he had meant to make to his friend. "Do it," Midoriya whispered. He forced up the smallest of smiles. Tears poured freely over his face. Uraraka, Bakugo, and All Might stopped around the boy they had run over to after seeing what he looked like after Zach's thickest darkness faded from around him. They heard Midoriya's voice though and froze, each of their hearts breaking as well at the pain in Midoriya's accepting tone that begged his friend not to give up now. We feel the same way. I know, Zach. You can do this.

The Death was thin around him, but Midoriya could still feel what Zach felt. And Zach could feel him too. If Midoriya could kill All For One, then I can do this!

"Zach! Don't let the world die," Midoriya cried.

Zach heard him and let out one final scream that rang out so loudly over the Lodge. "AHHHHHRAaaaaaHhhh HAAAAAAaaa…"

His darkness amplified all over the world. As if a heart beat pumped inside of each individual strand of Death that was struggling to stay together, they all doubled in size and thickness. His mind that was losing focus slammed into overdrive. Lagging waves of darkness and strands that stooped feebly sped back up. All his consciousness around the world focused in on the bodies around him still dead and causing him pain which meant that he had not revived them yet.

Entire forests of gray trees livened. The color green that had faded from the world returned. Fields of blackened grass lifted back up and waved in the wind that blew away the lingering shreds of Death over them. Dead fish on the surface of every ocean swam back below. The shrunken withered mushrooms and flaky moss patches spurred back to life and rejoined their blossoming ecosystems.

"STOP IT! Please Zach! You've done it!" Yaoyorozu yelled around towards black tendrils blowing away in the thinning cloud getting more gaps in it. More of the sky kept clearing and there was no sign of any single wisp getting thicker. "You've done enough! Now it's your turn! I love you. I love you, Zach. Listen to my voice, and come back! Please…"

Birds flapped their wings and returned to their nests and the tweeting babies back to life and clamoring for their mothers.

Dolphins leapt up out of the water on the sides of ships where sailors were waving their hats around and cheering at whatever thin shreds of darkness they could still see nearby. Some of the sailors cheering out the name of their savior looked down in surprise though at the noises the dolphins were making as they leapt out of the water. "Why, do they sound so sad?" One captain wondered to his crew, before slowly lifting his head back up and losing his smile as he watched the last of the black wisps disappearing from his sight. He lowered his hat back down in his arm losing strength, his own face dropping from the excited and cheerful expression he just held. He moved his hat in front of his heart and bowed his head, and his crew all did the same.

Darkness throughout Manhattan pulled in one direction. The remaining wisps moved in from the sides of Central Park. The grass and trees livened. The zoo in the park filled with various sounds of animals roaring and singing out in their returned lives. The field trip of elementary students already revived clapped with their teacher as the animals returned as well all around them. The last of the shreds of darkness in all of New York moved to the black bear enclosure and brought the few bears inside back to life. Then whatever was left that had not absorbed into anyone just faded from sight when there was nothing left for him to revive.

What was happening all around the world occurred in Japan as well. Zach's screams had gotten quieter first with the thinning of the overall cloud. Darkness faded from Tokyo and the other cities. The Death that had fallen over the countryside lifted back from the revived crops and every tiny village. Clumps and clusters of the darkness hung all over the sky, but with no direction to go they were breaking apart more and dispersing.

Tsuyu looked around with her mouth shut now and her eyes cleared. She looked around after rubbing her eyes and searched for something. "Zach-chan?" Asui called out. She yelled towards one of the wisps up above. "Y-You have to pull yourself together now!"

"That's right," Mineta whispered. What they all already knew was now at hand, but he stopped his tears and lost any look of acceptance. "Pull together! COME BACK!" Mineta shouted. The same phrase Zach had repeated constantly to everyone in the world was now shouted right back at him. "You hear me? COME BACK ZACH!"

Some of the Death wisps above swirled, but a tiny voice gasped from it too soft that barely any of them heard, "Still… some… left…"

A pair of men in reflective orange jackets down in the sewers of Rio stood back up. An experienced scuba diver deeper than most, inside of a cave with warning signs outside it that no amateurs should ever attempt the dive, opened her eyes back up. Her flashlight shone into the darkness ahead of her, and she swore there was even deeper darkness than the already pitch-black cave that faded away in front of her goggles.

Passengers slid down the inflatable slides they opened from the plane carried to the surface and placed on sand. They were cheering as they slid down. As were the beachgoers who understood why Lifebringer had brought a plane here. The lifeguards and volleyball players laughed and hugged each other. Whistling and clapping altogether. The darkness faded away, but some people just kept partying as they assumed that Lifebringer had moved on elsewhere. Even when their countries had completely lost every last strand of Death in it, some people continued to call out for their hero to keep going until every last one of them had been revived.

Death doubled-checked areas that he had already thoroughly searched. The consciousness in each strand was still so separated that it was even harder for Zach to control now though, because with the thinning of the Death meant huge sections were isolated from others. Clouds over Italy communicated to ones in South Africa that they had no physical connection to, if ever the cloud had truly been "physically" connected at all.

Only one thick mass of Death remained in all of Japan. It had been collected below All For One as a precaution against the villain to protect those already revived below. It had started thinning when Midoriya arose to fight him at first, then faded more once Deku had succeeded. That last of the thick Death strands over all of Japan was thin now too though. No longer covering a huge swath of the sky, it was not even covering all of the sky above the Lodge's property.

The cloud descended out of the air. The voices of those shouting at Zach to combine into one body held their breath. The Death got thinner. It lowered out of the air. It descended and more strands pulled towards it as it condensed. It looked to be condensing, as all the strands were pulling towards one body, and yet that body still looked thin even with every strand that pulled together. It was starting to gain a humanoid form though.

One girl sobbing and screaming at Zach to stop from the start of his revivals stepped forward. She only took one step though, as the descending cloud of Death was descending right over her. Yaoyorozu Momo had her head tilted back. She stared with held breath towards the head of the humanoid form of darkness lowering straight towards her. The last of the excess Death around that descending figure finally pulled into the human-shaped form that was a similar size and shape that they all recognized. A smile started to spread over her face as dim red eyes appeared and looked into hers.

The legs of that humanoid form kept getting thinner and more wispy. The torso and left arm broke apart. A pitch black arm made of mist seemed to be where the rest of the body was moving into. The strands too thin to make up a whole human form moved into one arm to give it a semi-solid mass for a moment. Not thick enough to be a solid, and so gaseous that the girl it reached towards could see through it. The hand reached forward at the end of that right arm and did not grab onto Momo's hand that she had started reaching up for the descending body at first before freezing when most of it broke apart. She was frozen in place, her eyes trembling, as that Death hand moved right past her own shaking fingers.

The hand cupped onto Momo's right cheek while even the head also lost its semi-solid form. Just enough Death had come together, that for a brief moment she could feel something there. She felt the touch of that hand stopping on her face. The hand's thumb brushed underneath her eye and wiped away a tear, before it lost form and faded, like the rest of the Death behind it. Her reaching hand curled into the wisps breaking apart. She grasped at it, swinging her arm in and falling forward as she could not grab that which was no longer there. Yaoyorozu dropped to her knees. Her head bowed. Her heart sank. She brought both hands up in front of her chest and cried out for whatever thin invisible wisps of Death may have faded from human sight but were still able to hear for another moment, "I love you, Zach!"

"Goodbye."

---

A/N Thank you for reading. That was Death. I really hope you enjoyed this story. Took me four years, and well over 4 million words, but it's finally complete. The apocalypse is ended. The world is saved. A bittersweet ending though to be sure. Let me know in the comments below if you guys would like an epilogue. I have one in mind, and if you would like I'll post it sometime soon. Also, when the day comes that I write my own book that isn't fanfic, I'll be sure to post an extra chapter at the end of this that will act as a notification to you guys if you want to read that! I know some of you have shown interest so I'll be happy to put that in. Also if I do an epilogue, I think I'll create a Discord and post at the end of it as some people have suggested so we can discuss the story... but I'm still thinking about that. Anyway! A few of you got close in your predictions. Some a bit farther off. No one guessed the Apocalypse though. I'll respond to a ton of the reviews from the past two chapters down below here now, but again to all of you who don't read through those, I do want to thank you for all your support over the past few years. Your favorites, follows, just the amount of views and visitors, but especially the feedback I've gotten has made this process so much more fun. It made it exciting each time I uploaded to see how you guys would respond to each chapter and development in the story. I really appreciate you for sticking with me for the ride. And despite the bittersweet ending, I hope you enjoyed. Thank you. Review response time:

N9R chapter 255 . Feb 15

Hey man, the story is doing so well. 2 more chapters and this story will have an ending, which is pretty rare for a story as long as this, so congrats to you. It's been over a year since I last read this fanfic (I left on ch.100), but I did read your author notes at times lol. I'm 4 years in and I'm still only on chapter 10 of my own novel due to my constant writer's block, so I do commend and admire you for going this far for this story and for your fans, especially for nonprofit. I do hope you consider having a writing career. You could definitely be a novelist with all this effort. 'Death' alone is close to 8 books. Never forget about your character Zach. I'm going to restart where I left off and at least try to finish reading it. Thank you so much for creating this story.

Thank you! Hope you managed to read all the way to the end and enjoy this final chapter. I really hope my writing career does take off if I can manage to find as much enthusiasm for my own non-fanfic book as I've always found for these. I am definitely never going to forget Zach for the rest of my life. He's been a huge part of it. I've felt more emotion for him than for my own life at times. Probably (definitely) shed more tears for him than for anything in my own life. Anyway, you're welcome for writing, and thanks for reading and reviewing!

TachyonPhantom chapter 255 . Feb 16

Hey dude, how's it going?
I've got to say this was a nice chapter. Sorry about not reviewing for the last few: college has got me busy these days. But I just want to say, as this story comes to an end, I've come to reflect on just how much it means to me. This story's been with me since it was less than 20 chapters long, far before I even actually got a fanfiction account. It's stuck with me through thick and thin and has gotten me through both the toughest and best times in my life. I, like a number of other readers, have grown deeply attached to Zach's character and how both he and your writing have grown and changed over the years. I admire your sheer dedication and the efforts you went through to entertain all of us readers. This fic will remain as a staple of the website, and in my opinion is a strong contender for the title of the greatest fanfiction there ever was. Every reader of this fic, can recognize your talent in creating unique and creative subplots and following them through until they are finished, and I believe that this skill in particular will take you far in your writing endeavors. As a whole, I'd just like to thank you for all of your time and effort over these last ~4 years and reiterate that though the end of this fic may make us sad, that we are incredibly proud of you and are excited to see where you'll go.
Looking forward to picking up a physical book with your real name on the cover in the future.
-Tachyon

Going well! I just moved out of Anchorage, AK, and I'm starting my drive from Seattle to Florida over the next few weeks to live closer to my mother. Going to be a nice change to live in warmer climate for once after years in mountains! I'm always happy to hear that others are as invested into Zach's life as I am. Writing out those subplots to completion is something I always try to do. Seeing Gondorhan, Drac, Intanzo, All For One, all the loose ends tie up at the end of this story reminds me of that and makes me glad that people like you recognize it too! It was at times of the last four years the most important thing in my life, and the effort I put into it that some weeks/months it was practically all I worked on really was tough, and I'm glad you appreciate that too. I look forward to putting out a book someday for y'all to read too, and I thank you for the encouragement to do it! Thanks a lot for all the reviews, and I hope you've enjoyed these final two chapters!

Writour's Block chapter 255 . Feb 16

NEW UPDAAAATE LETSSS GOOOOOOOOOO!
I don't think an author's note has ever left me emotional until now. It's amazing to hear that you've been writing fan fiction for 8 years. As sad as it is to hear you are moving on, I also feel happy for you and the new chapter you've decided to write on your own life. Good luck to you! I hope life treats you well!
I remember first reading Death on a visit to the US. If I recall correctly the most recent chapter at that time was when Zach first called Yaoyorozu "Momo" by the rooftop. You can't imagine how hard I screamed "YES" when they finally kissed.
To see Death become the story that it is now is an amazing experience. I love the main source material of MHA, but the fact that you've managed to pace things so that the story has reached the 2nd, 3rd, (and in the next 2 chapters) graduation and "real life" is something that I'll always appreciate and hope to see from more stories.
You've created so many original characters who are amazing and have done amazing world building with this story. This chapter was such an emotional rollercoaster. One second I'm bawling because of Zach unloading all of his emotions, the next second I'm trying hard to control my laugher because of Bakugo competing with Deku on who can get out of the hospital first.
Classic Bakugo. CLASSIC. I don't know if I've told you this, but I love how you write him.
I also like how you incorporated romance in your story. Bakugo reflecting on the peck, Ochaco pulling the chair from underneath Bakugo's bed to imply that she stayed with Izuku (and Bakugo) for a long time. Momo DOING THE SAME THING. I swear to God if there's a dance and graduation in the next chapter, then MOMOZAKI must be having a huge payoff. All their interactions in this chapter had me squealing! From Momo keeping Zach calm when he woke up, comforting him when he was bawling, and finally Bakugo (begrudgingly) learning of Momo's assistance and looking to Zach the next moment.
Please Momozaki payoff. PLEAASE.

LEGGOOOOO! Been a fun 8 years. Going on 9... and honestly, going to be 9. As much as I plan on moving onto a real book sometime soon, I think I'll be writing a bit more fanfic for a little longer as I upload some chapters I have planned out or finished already of Nexus (my other largest story that was my main one up until I started writing Death). Anyway, I'm glad to hear how much you liked Bakugo's character in this. Bakugo and Ochaco at the dance must have been fun to read. Lots of Momozaki payoff in these final chapters... as sad as it got in them too. I liked the other predictions, and some were close or did happen too! Nice calls! Truncated the review a bit, but just 'cause of length as I'll do for some other reviews down here too. Chapter's already 37,000, but it's gonna add another 3k easy with all these reviews here. Thanks for yours. All of yours. And I hope you enjoyed the end to Death!

Kerchanko chapter 255 . Feb 16

Hey man, just finished the chapter and your author's note. I remember first finding this Fanfic back when chapter 32 was new, I was turning 19 and trying to learn my way taking care of myself and my girlfriend. I've religiously read every chapter as they came out since. Hearing that you are moving beyond fanfics and going for fully fledged books is amazing honestly. For 4 years now I've been a huge fan and have joked with my now wife about how when you finish this I want to get it printed into two sets of hardback volumes, one for myself and one to send to you. I genuinely think this story to be uncontested as my #1 favorite piece of literature. I hope I'm in the last review section since you featured me back in like chapter 53 or something. You should put your writing alias in the last AN so we can find your "official" works when they publish. Sincerely, a long time fan.

That's awesome. I love hearing stories like this. I hope you and your wife have a ton of fun stories from this. I'm happy to feature you in this final chapter. And as for my official writing alias... well, I'm not sure what that will be when I finally publish a real novel. Doubt I'll use my actual name. Thomas M. Baker might be a good one, just as a joke to you guys who read my fanfictions before I started on other work. The M. will stand for Matthew, which I suppose is my real name so that part will be legit XD. TMB though will most likely be my initials in any novel I write. Just to look out for! Thanks for the review!

Smlluffy67 chapter 255 . Feb 18

WHY AM I FEELING THE SAME WAY I FELT WHEN I HEARD GOKU SAY UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN AT THE END OF GT man I remember when I read one of your stories for the first time the z fighters in marinford and then years later when I would read Nexus for the first time not realizing that you wrote both stories I'm gonna be sad that we won't be getting any more updates for Nexus or broken log pose but I'm glad that you're going forward and doing what you want to and while there is a very small part of me that hopes one day you will come back to update nexas I know it's probably not gonna happen but at least I can come back and read these stories from start to finishfor the 300th time) and get sucked in to it. these stories specifically nexas have gave me alot to read and alot to look forward to and every time I read it I always find something I missed before and I now I'm still gonna find stuff when I go back to read it. so as a great late night Anime TV host once said stay gold. HEY who put these onions here im not CRYING YOU ARE

That made me feel so nostalgic. Back when I finished GT and there was no talk of Super ever being a thing, it was a crazy moment of feels knowing Goku's story had ended. Love hearing that you've read so many of my fanfics. And it'll make you happy to know that I'm definitely going to post some more Nexus soon. I've got too much already written to not do so. Nexus and Death together are upwards of what? 7? 8 million words? XD A nice few months of rereading at any given time. Stay gold my friend. And, thanks for all the reviews!

Fireknight06 chapter 255 . Feb 24

Thank you for everything. Despite everything you wrote, this story is still so criminally underrated. I really hope that once this is completed, more people will see and give this story the recognition it deserves.

You're welcome for it all. I tend not to consider that too much (the underrated part). I figure some categories get more or less love. And certain topics in certain categories get more too, and I know the My Hero fanbase isn't necessarily looking for stories like mine, as much as I wish they were. OC-centered fics are always tough to garner attention towards. It's why in the description Izuku's name is still first rather than OC. Just something I considered when I started writing and never went back to change I guess. XD Hope more people do come to read it though. Another of my fics, Nexus, barely ever got any readers and I still wrote millions of words of that one too. I just love writing! Thanks for the review and the kind words. Hope you enjoyed the ending!

sloganlogan chapter 256 . Mar 3

is this real? Am I having a fever dream?

That was the proper reaction to what you just read.

EmperorCookies chapter 256 . Mar 3

I called it, fucking called it so fucking hard. God damn you tmb, why can't you let him have peace. And goddamn me for enjoying every second of it.

And if Airi gets capped I'm pirating your book.

XD Y'all know me too well. I'm surprised some people actually thought I was going to finish uneventfully with a dance and graduation lol. Don't worry. Airi cheers Zach on. Accepting of his decision and helping him through it. I hope you enjoyed this chapter, like I know you've enjoyed the rest of this fanfic.

cartoonfan9 chapter 256 . Mar 3

Okay. Let's start with the positives first. It's confirmed that Momo loves Zach. Bakugo does indeed like Uraraka (which I kind of knew a long time ago tbh they were close even before the Machia fight). Lots of other couples/dates, new and old. Interesting how so many dates came from the Battle of Tokyo alone.

And then you kill everybody. I actually started laughing when All For One came in. Of course you'd bring him after making it seem like he abandoned Shigaraki and the League and was out of the story. He was searching for a world ending Quirk all this time like Zach knew.
My predictions are in line with some people before me. Zach will revive everyone somehow, but at what cost? Maybe that's how he'll die. I've had a feeling for at least two years that Zach will die. I'd like to think that full strength Zach, Midoriya, or Bakugo could beat AFO 1v1. But no idea what'll happen in this specific scenario.
Guess we'll find out in the next and final chapter. I'll give a story review and my best wishes for you once that chapter comes out. Still hoping for a happy ending, but I've never expected it.

Zach revives everyone, but at what cost? Any cost. You were one of the few who called it. He needed Apocalypse to save them all. The Bakugo Uraraka ship was something I definitely very slowly built at over the course of years. Momo and Zach confirmed once again... Yeah. Then... Well. Cartoonfan9, I appreciate all your comments. I look forward to your review now that the story's over. And best wishes to you too. Thanks for reviewing!

Tigracho chapter 256 . Mar 3

OH FUCK DANG IT! OF COURSE HE WAS THE LAST LOOSE END. NOW HE SERVES AS THE POST FINAL BOSS AND SOMEHOW I BELIEVE HE'S GOING TO RUIN THE HAPPY ENDING.
DAMN YOU AUTHOR I HATE YOU BUT I ALSO LOVE YOU IDK HOW TO FEEL AAAHHHHHHHHH

Loose ends tied. Post final boss defeated. Happy ending... ;( Hope you enjoyed this final chapter! Thank you for another review!

Yamajiji chapter 256 . Mar 3

Have to say I didn't expect this. It was… something. I'm just very fucking curious as to what will happen now in that final chapter. I'm hyped, and I know you'll deliver. I'm looking forward to it.

Always glad to catch you off guard. Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks for reviewing!

diddles321 chapter 256 . Mar 3

Cant believe I've followed this series since ch 62? Good stuff mate! How will this all end? Was it all a dream? Is everyone dying because of some death particles so Zach cant revive them? If this theory is true will Zach gain uncontrollable power from the death of the human race and live an eternal cursed existence unable to control himself or die?! Or is it... AFO stole another user of Death's quirk and started killing everyone?!

Nice call on that final prediction! XD Great guess- wait, pretty sure I revealed that by the end of last chapter lol. Or at least close to that. The Gondorhan mystery is finally revealed and we see that AFO took a Quirk that day very similar to Zach's which he used here. Hope you enjoyed these final chapters. And thanks for reviewing!

Jxgod chapter 256 . Mar 4

fuuuckk right up until the final scene that was the most wholesome thing ive ever read. The nostalgia almost brought me to tears. Why would you do this to us?

It was a very wholesome dance. The nostalgia hit me in the feels too. As to why I did it? Because I'm a sick fuck- no, because I like to tie up loose ends. Yeah. That's the one! Lol, I do like trolling you guys though. It's always been a passion of mine. Those of you who were around back before chapter 63 was posted and had to deal with my troll when I first killed Zach, then took a few weeks after saying it was the end, only to have him alive again, might have seen this coming though... Thanks for the review Jxgod. And I hope despite kicking your heart in the dick, you still found a way to enjoy this last chapter!

Anon chapter 256 . Mar 3

This is so fucked. This is soooooo damn fucked. I can't even really be mad cuz I like the story so much, but this is SOOOOO FUCKED m8. It's like fucking Camping all over again. I'm actively losing my shit.

Yeah, that was pretty fucked. Zach knew All For One was going for it for so long though. We hadn't seen a peep from him for hundreds of chapters and then- BAM. Hope the month of suspense wasn't too rough on you, and that you enjoyed how the ending played out, even if it wasn't how you hoped it would. Thanks for reviewing!

Super Power Sensei chapter 256 . Mar 7

Posted on March 8, 2022
Surprise! Hey everyone, I been gone for a while haven't I? Last review I posted was back when Ares was defeated.

Hey! Glad you're back. I hope you went ahead and read the last few chapters and made it all the way to the ending despite the other important stuff you've got going on in your life. When I write a real book one day, I'll definitely be letting you all know with another update to this story so you can go out and find it. I'd be happy to hear you guys tell me in reviews on here what you think of the book I link on it one day! XD Tons of cool ideas and comments for the chapters over the past years I would have loved to hear while I was writing, but still sound cool seeing when you thought of them in that long review (that I think was too long that fanfic dot net actually shortened it and cut some off). We never got back to Life City to see much about them. I think Zach mentioned at one point that he was protecting them and if they ever decided to show themselves to the world it would be their decision to do so, but that could be a long way in the future. (Don't even remember if he's said that, or if it's just my head-canon lol). Anyway, I'm glad to hear you've been working on yourself. It's always a good thing to make sure you're doing great mentally and helping your family. Awesome things to hear from you. I always enjoyed reading your reviews. And I hope you do well in the future, I sincerely do. I thank you for the many comments you've posted and even if I didn't always heed it, I appreciated any suggestions and criticisms as well. Thank you for it. And I am forever glad that Death meant that much to you over the years.

Guest chapter 256 . Mar 31

WTF MAN LET THEM HAVE A HAPPY ENDING WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS TO MY POOR BOY

Because shock! Horror! Suspense! Hurt/comfort- XD All of the above. Thanks for reviewing! Hope you like/ are satisfied, with how it all turned out.

Guest chapter 256 . Mar 31

This is not the style of story for Zach ti bring everyone back. Best case scenario for an ending here would be Zach dies to stop the virus from spreading or something. Or Zach somehow rewinds time. Or if it's a dark ending then Zach's going to be alone in a world with no one in it…
Worse than Ares. All alone. Forever?
Man why would you do this . Could left it at that and then have something like 10 years later or whatever but I guess you wouldn't be you if you didn't do this. God dammit

Well... guess the style changed? XD Zach gets his dose of Apocalypse he hid from Kaminari, from his friends- from you, the readers! He's a tricky one whose character has always been built on deceiving everybody, and 'thinking constantly.' These things that have been built into Zach's character over years led him to saving a dose of Apocalypse and hiding it. Just as the waves of torment and grief built up over years too which had Zach in too much despair to think straight at first and remember that one last chance he still had. The ace in the hole. I still think he's done more than any of your predictions though in keeping the ending happier. Zach saved the world. He revived everyone... ;( and the world was saved. Thanks for the review.

Guest chapter 256 . Apr 3

If People survive then they'll think in hindsight how stupid they were to think they've won when all for one is still loose and presumably alive. There is no safety and there is no peace with AFO around. The symbol of evil ! They forgot that shigarki was a tool for AFO the same way Kaminari was. AFO has always been the main threat

No need to worry about AFO being on the loose anymore, huh? Midoriya shows that he can do it when it comes down to it. Zach and Deku's arguments over morality have been a huge focus of this story. And as much as they disagree, a part of each of them accepted that the other's mentality was needed. Midoriya could see all the good Zach did. It's what kept him from revealing that he knew Zach was Death. But Zach also knew that Deku meant to be that Symbol which he knew he never could be. Something untainted, which meant not killing. Yet when it came to All For One, after ending the whole world, Midoriya showed he could take a life while Zach- instead of killing- only used his Quirk to bring life at the end. Thanks for reviewing. I hope you enjoyed this ending.

-As sad as it might be, I do hope you all appreciate the end to this story that has taken years to complete. It has been a passion of mine that I am glad to have shared with you all. Thank you all for reading. I hope you've enjoyed. And... Stay frosty. XD