MHA Idea Pool

by Titanmaster 117

(All ideas are up for adoption) much like my RWBY Idea Pool, this is a place where all the ideas and concepts that I don't have the time or patience to write hang out and play! If any of you want to use something in here then feel free to shoot me a PM and get started, but until then, let's see what we've got in this little goodie bag of quirky tales and stories!

48. Heroes Ascendant

Heroes Ascendant

(Inspired by Destiny)

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When Izuku was given One for All, he felt that his soul not only expand but also settle in a contradictory haze, feeling it be planted down in an alien landscape within his own head.

He later attends U.A.'s entrance exam and performs the same maneuver that he does in canon to save Ochako from the zero-pointer robot. However, during this time, he suddenly receives a strange vision of Light and Darkness, of duality and balance between the two and the consequences of not being able to reach it.

And then, his vision shifts to a strange white orb, floating in an alien realm, trapped on an island in a sea of screams.

When he awakes and after he is healed, he goes to tell All Might about his vision, expecting it to be something normal to happen for someone when they receive One for All. To his surprise, All Might doesn't know what to make of the vision, having never experienced such a thing during his tenure as the number one hero.

Later, Izuku meets with Ochako properly, the latter introduces herself to him and thanks him for saving her as the two become friends, alongside Reiko Yanagi, a quiet girl who offers him cryptic advice and words that don't have much meaning to Izuku. At least, not at the moment.

However, when they part ways and Reiko meets with her friends Yui Kodai and Togaru Kamakiri, they are hounded by a group of villains, all of them with a paracausally-powered parasite in their brains, granting the hollow-minded bodies and their master unholy power.

The battle between the two sides is quick and not shown, but by the time the three hero students-to-be are done, all that's left of the villains are ash and dust, lost to the win.

Soon enough, Izuku returns to U.A. as a student of Class 1-A, and meets his new classmates, that being Ochako and the trio Reiko, Yui, and Kamakiri from Class 1-B, who make themselves his friends, even when they all hold secrets.

Izuku, meanwhile, is unsure of what to make of the strange power of One for All, as it seems to both work for him and not work for him, somehow helping him and hurting him at the same time, as if it is in conflict with each other. Even when he uses One for All in Aizawa's quirk application test, during the earliest training exercises, and in the battle trials a week later, it seems to conflict with him, unable to balance with each other.

However, two weeks after they arrive at U.A. (I'm kind of spacing out the timeline a bit here to give the story itself some room to breathe), Class 1-A and 1-B are taken to the USJ to train together...

And are met by the League of Villains, who flood into the USJ and force the students to scatter across the grounds into pairs and groups.

However, this version of the League of Villains is much more dangerous than in canon, as they wield not just various villainous thugs – armed with new technology and weapons that glow with Resonant energy – but also alien creatures wielding unnatural powers providing coordination and limited leadership amongst the villains.

They are the Subjugators, the Harbingers wielding Strand, and the Omens wielding Stasis, acting as commanding officers for Shigaraki and his own pet Nomu, mutated into a horrific abomination and fused together with that strange, alien technology that hums with Resonance.

Shigaraki calls his Nomu the Aspect of Pride and sends it to kill the heroes and children.

Class 1-A and 1-B are forced to fight for their lives against the ravenous villains, facing off not just against the empowered thugs but also the Subjugators and the unearthly powers that the Nomu can summon against them. Overtime, most of them find themselves overpowered by the alien creatures and their minions, unable to keep up the long fight against the unnatural powers that they possess, as if their quirks themselves are being dampened and muted by their very presence.

Izuku is doing even worse than all of them, as One for All seems to be reacting negatively to the lotuses of Resonance around him, the dark powers gnawing at his own quirk and threatening to eat it alive. It's almost like One for All is threatening to cannibalise itself.

The only ones that are doing well are the Class 1-B trio, as they work to neutralise not just villains and thugs but also kill the Subjugators and fighting against the Aspect of Pride and its Resonant abilities. Their efforts allow for many of their classmates the chance to run, to find shelter and safety away from the monsters, the chance to survive.

Eventually, All Might arrives to save his students and fellow teachers and does battle against the Aspect of Pride, putting up an immense fight against it, even when the horrific creature that is the Nomu summons Tormentors, its Disciples of Pride, to assist it, though the Class 1-B trio are able to deal with them.

During this battle, one member of the trio ends up getting taken out, but in a flash of Light they're back on their feet. This happens in the background though, and few people notice it.

Eventually, All Might is able to defeat the Aspect of Pride, killing the monster and working with his fellow teachers and heroes (including the newly arrived reinforcements) to deal with the rest of the League of Villains, defeating not just the villains but also managing to kill the rest of the Subjugators (though this takes an effort in of itself). As the League of Villains goes on the retreat, Shigaraki, enraged, goes to strike a blow on the weakened All Might and kill the number one hero himself-

Only for Izuku to throw him away, thereby getting in the way of his strike.

Izuku disintegrates in a burst of orange light, and dies, right there in the USJ in front of everyone...

And then he wakes up, in an alien world, surrounded by the voices of One for All's past users, living echoes residing in the space that One for All has occupied.

One for All isn't just a transferable quirk; it is a passage into the Ascendant Realm.

One for All is a throne world, a place where the wounded soul of those that control them can retreat to upon their death in the physical world to heal and return. Originally, it hadn't been powerful enough to do anything but store the disembodied souls of the previous users of One for All until their deaths, but with each passing victory and act of righteousness conducted by each One for All user, the throne world was slowly built piece by piece, utilising a form of sword logic for its construction.

Now, after All Might's long contribution as the number one hero and the thousands of battles that he has fought and won, the throne world is mighty and powerful, and all the previous users of One for All are finally able to begin returning to the real world once more in their physical forms. The only reason that All Might never knew about this aspect of One for All was because One for All was still too weak for it to function as an adequate throne world. That, and All Might never died during his time.

As long as Izuku and none of the other One for All users are killed in One for All's throne world, then they are effectively immortal.

However, in the material world, All Might doesn't know this, as he, with a roar of rage at Izuku's death, punches Shigaraki so hard that he is reduced to a splatter on the wall, with which Kurogiri flees the USJ for his life, leaving an mournful All Might to kneel down next to the ashes of Izuku Midoriya, surrounded by students that are both horrified by the death of their classmate and the fact that All Might has killed a man right in front of them, villain or not. Some of them even have splatters of blood across them...

And then, through a tear in the fabric of space, Izuku steps through the rift between real space and the Ascendant Plane, much to the shock and amazement of the people around him... save for a few.

Elsewhere, Shigaraki's remains (or what's left of them at the very least) are being taken away, only for a flicker of Light to emerge from him as he is covered by a sickly golden light...

And then suddenly Shigaraki is alive and well, and kills his guards, destroying the armoured van that he is being taken away in with a burst of Resonant energy before transmatting away.

Shigaraki is something new. Something that is using the powers of the Darkness to become a dark parody of the forces that have come before, in a past once-forgotten.

Tomura Shigaraki is a Darkbearer, a parallel to the Lightbearers, reshaped by the Darkness through Stasis and Strand and Resonance and gaining powers to rival that of the Guardians of old. He even has a dark mockery of a Ghost, something that he refers to as a Wraith. Worse yet, because the Darkness is linked to memory, consciousness, and other metaphysical properties, he still retains the memories of his life before his first death and resurrection.

And he's not the only one.

(This is all essentially me taking Destiny's basic formula and completely flipping it on its head. In this story, the one with the throne world deep in the Ascendant Plane is the good guy, and the one with the ability to resurrect themselves from the dead on the spot with a Ghost is the bad guy.

Who says that crossovers can't play with the formula?)

Shigaraki transmats himself into the bar, and finds himself with Kurogiri and Doctor Garaki, and All for One...

All for One, the big bad of MHA and the driving force behind the actions of most of its major villains...

All for One, who has been Taken.

He's no longer himself. He has been made a servant, an unwilling slave who had his soul ripped out of his body and reconstructed to become loyal to his new master, a hollow echo of who he once was.

Then, Shigaraki and his minions, including the Taken All for One, are called upon by an eldritch force through a relic of Darkness, speaking through a shade of Taken energy.

She calls herself the Mother, an eldritch entity with unknown origins, who has taken command of the Taken and the remains of the Black Fleet, as well as the other surviving Darkness entities such as the Dread, the godless Hive, and others. She has grown so powerful that she has even seized control of the Dreadnaught, Oryx's throne world, for herself, and has infested it with the Taken and the Dread.

Herself, or itself. Whatever the Mother is, whatever its dark origins are, whether it drudged itself from the Sea of Screams in the Ascendant Plane or made through more artificial means, whether it was constructed by the combined will of the Taken or born from the drudged-up memories of an Echo, it is now a force capable of bending the paracausal nature of the world itself to its - her - will.

And through her, she commands the Ascendancy, the gathering of likeminded and paracausal entities scattered across the Earth and beyond, working to create a new future and carve their destiny into the universe itself.

Shigaraki is angered to know that he lost at the USJ, and wants to know why the Dread and Black Fleet technology that he'd given to his villains and Nomu had failed so much. The Mother, speaking through her Echo, tells Shigaraki that the fault for the failings of the Dread and Darkness technologies are Shigaraki's own, not anyone else's. He had been the one to rally his villains and given them their technology, to reshape them into Dread much like the rest of their forces (making the villains at the USJ a new form of Dread known as the Reapers, which serve as the Knight/Minotaur/Captain archetype in the faction) and he had been the ones to deploy his Nomu and the Subjugators and Tormentors in the way that had caused them to fail. Only a bad painter blames his brush, and he has been very careless with the canvas that he has been painting upon.

Shigaraki, upon hearing those words, is bitter at the fact that he has failed, only for the Mother to tell him that he hasn't failed. In actuality, he has succeeded.

His distraction at the USJ had drawn away All Might and the heroes and allowed their allies in the Acolytes of Nezarec to raid the HPSC and retrieve their data caches on the Pyramid Ship that they had in their possession, its location, and where they were attempting to construct a new Radial Mast.

The Mother informs Shigaraki to be patient, that he will have his time soon enough. For now, Shigaraki should get to healing his wounds. She will contact him and the rest of the Darkbearers for when the time is right.

Her Echo fades away, and the Taken All for One leaves with her. Shigaraki demands to know from Garaki how the Nomus are doing, and Garaki responds that it's going well enough. The Nomu are reacting well with the Black Fleet technology that has been granted to them by their new benefactor. Soon, they will have over a dozen High End Nomu capable of leading the rest of the Dread alongside Shigaraki.

But that's not the project that Garaki is interested in. Not anymore. He's more interested in the restoration of his master, All for One, through the usage of his sentient quirk and the vestige that he has in his possession. The Mother seems to be interested in Garaki's efforts as well, and has gifted him access to a valuable treasure:

A massive army of Eliksni, cloned into existence by the Moon's newest inhabitants using the destroyed Leviathan's cloning technology and rendered braindead by the Mother for Garaki's purposes.

And what is Garaki's purpose? To splinter and fracture All for One's vestige so that it may be implanted into each Eliksni body, creating a hivemind amongst them and turning them all into vessels for All for One, giving him a million bodies for his one mind to inhabit, each one capable of stealing a quirk and sharing it amongst the collective.

They would be the House of Ruin, and they would be the key to All for One's ascension into godhood.

Shigaraki simply wishes him luck in that regard, and goes to confer with Kurogiri and his Wraith about their next moves...

Back with the heroes, Izuku is being looked over by Recovery Girl and a team of medics, all the while All Might is utterly amazed and confused as to how he is alive. After all, he had watched him die himself. Izuku begins to explain, but even he isn't sure how to explain it. When he tells All Might about the previous wielders of One for All in the throne world, still attempting to manifest the power that they need to return to the real world, All Might tells him to stop joking, not enjoying the idea that Izuku is joking or lying about his dead master being alive, but when Izuku makes clear that he isn't making it up, All Might can't find anything to say, already emotionally exhausted from having not only killed a man with his bare hands - still covered in his blood, no less - but also watching his successor die right in front of him.

And then later, when All Might is brought in to observe the dead Nomu and they explain to him the fact that the creature had the DNA of multiple people, ergo having multiple quirks in it, not to mention how he is then informed of the destruction of the van carting away Shigaraki's body and his remains being disappeared does All Might breakdown at the realisation that his arch-nemesis is very much alive and active once more.

But all those resulting questions and quandaries will have to wait, as the Sports Festival is fast approaching, and it cannot be stopped by a mere villain attack. The students of Class 1-A and B are forced to put aside their fears and traumas to get ready for the event that may decide their careers and their futures.

However, as the authorities and those inside U.A. begin to examine the strange devices and bodies of the Dread that had been recovered from the USJ, they begin to hear whispers through the lingering Resonance found in them, and begin to feel compulsions as the Voice in the Darkness begins to quietly speak to them, telling them not of Final Shapes, but of Harmony.

Meanwhile, Class 1-A – save for Izuku – is assaulted by visions of Darkness and winnowing, brought on by one of their own interacting with Black Fleet technology, though most of them – save for the spies – don't know about it.

In particular, Hatsume Mei in the support department becomes fascinated by the devices that the villains in the USJ were using and begins to look for ways to replicate them.

Soon, the Sports Festival begins, and this time, it is a lot different than in canon. The first round of the Sports Festival is a race just like in canon, and in the end, a total of forty-eight students are able to pass. Interestingly, a majority of Class 1-B are able to pass this round via working together and assisting each other in the race in comparison to their fellows in Class 1-A who – for the most part – prioritise gaining first place and achieving victory, meaning that the latter of the two classes end up taking up a majority of the space within the class.

But the second round is where the real differences began, as the remaining competitors are separated into teams and told that to pass to the tournament stage, they must complete a timed battle trial in which they must save multiple civilians – in this case, the civilians are practice dummies as stand-ins – from an army of villains, that being villain-pointer robots – with one-pointer serving as minor foes, two-pointers as mini-bosses and elites, and three-pointers as bosses and majors – and place them in a designated shelter to earn points, which will add to a total amount for the end of the match. Additionally, extra points will be rewarded for displays of teamwork and positive interactions between teammates to work towards a singular objective. Once the time limit has been reached, the four teams that have the most points will move on to the tournament round, and the other three teams will be disqualified.

In essence, the second encounter plays out like a raid/dungeon encounter.

Izuku is placed on a team with Reiko, Ochako, and Hatsume, and they get to work on saving the dummy civilians and defeating the hordes of villain-pointer bosses, with Izuku and Hatsume prioritising the civilians, Ochako taking on the one-pointers and the mini-bosses, and Reiko taking out the major foes and the boss bots.

However, through working together, the team realises that there is a hidden puzzle within the combat trial, and their efforts to solve end up unlocking the final boss, that being a souped-up variant of the villain-bots that, upon defeating, allows the team to pass just as the time comes to an end, clinching victory with just a few seconds to spare.

They are the last team to succeed. The first team to pass the test, composed of Bakugo, Todoroki, Kirishima, and Momo, were the quickest and more efficient of the teams to pass, using simplistic and brutal tactics against the villain-bots, but this came at a cost of proper teamwork and coordination within the group in pursuit of victory, losing them points in the long run. The next team to pass, that being composed of Ibara, Kendo, Tetsutetsu, and Setsuna, had been able to spot and solve the puzzle early on in the battle, but were only able to defeat the final boss through a long struggle of attrition throughout the match. The final team, meanwhile, composed of Shinso, Monoma, Yui, and Kamakiri, were able to save all the dummy civilians but were unable to defeat the boss of the match and gain its points to push them to the top team.

Yui and Kamakiri seem to be holding back their true strength and are rankled by it but continue to do so on Reiko's orders. The time to reveal themselves has not yet arrived.

During their time, Izuku is approached by Todoroki once more, who ends up revealing that he is disturbed by how Izuku was killed and brought back to life at the USJ, and exposits onto the green-haired boy his own backstory, which is much of the same in canon except for one major difference:

Touya Todoroki died when he was just a baby. Genuinely died via overloading his quirk in their old home and burning the entire building down with him, attempting to kill Shoto, Endeavour, and his entire family in a suicide attack. The entirety of his family was scarred from the fire, with Rei being hospitalised from the sheer amount of burns, leaving her horrifically burnt and withered even to this day.

Meanwhile, all that was left of Touya was a burnt skeleton, still trying to kill baby Shoto and get his father to notice him even to his last moments.

Now, in this story, Endeavour's abuse of Shoto and his children is born not just from a desire to surpass All Might through them – maybe it's not even that anymore – but a strangling grief over the loss of his first child and a need to make sure that his children would be strong enough to face any challenge that came their way.

Now, the rest of the family has gone their separate ways. Rei has divorced from Endeavour, becoming Rei Himura once more. Natsuo has moved out and taken on the Himura name as well, whilst Fuyumi, while keeping the Todoroki name, has moved out and quit her job as a teacher to care for Rei fulltime, as she is unable to take care of herself from her burns and injuries.

Shoto, meanwhile, has stayed with Endeavour and has been raised to become not so much the ultimate successor, but the ultimate hero; the one who could never be beaten and surpass All Might to become a hero who could never be hurt, who could never lose anyone or be hurt much like Endeavour had lost Touya.

However, because of all of this, Shoto has developed a phobia of his own fire, not just out of a desire to spite Endeavour but also as a trauma response to Touya's attack when he was a baby, leaving him with burn marks not just on his face but also a larger portion of his body. This also makes summoning his fire difficult, as even after years of physical therapy and healing, those burn scars are still sensitive to heat and leave him in pain when it is summoned.

Truthfully, Todoroki no longer knows if he even wants to be a hero. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life anymore. All that he knows is that he wants to spite his father for everything that he has done, and make sure that he can't do what he did to anyone else ever again.

But beyond all that...

Todoroki can't understand why his brother had to die while Izuku got a second chance at life.

Izuku doesn't have an answer.

Todoroki leaves, and the battle tournament begins, though this time it is a lot different than in canon, as the teams remain intact, and the tournament is structured like a Crucible match. Each team with be paired off with each other, and the four teams will battle in four versus four matches. Then, when two teams remain, they will face off against each other, and the winning team will be split off into pairs of two, then the losing pair will battle each other for third place, and then the winning pair will battle and decide the winner of the tournament.

First up, it is Izuku's team going up against Shinso's, and the two begin their match with Reiko and Ochako taking on Yui and Kamakiri, Hatsume fighting Monoma (or rather, using him to advertise her inventions) whilst Izuku faces off against Shinso, who attempts to use his mind control quirk on him-

Only for the brainwasher to be assaulted by a vision of an unnatural world of ungodly might and calcified memory, a woman submerged and chained down in both light and darkness, and of alien forces converging on a strange sphere floating on an island in a Sea of Screams...

Then, he finds himself in a strange world made of godly righteousness, surrounded by old, dead figures of heroes past, who tall him that he is not welcome into their world and ejects him.

Violently.

(Think of it as something from Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.)

Shinso wakes up on the ground, bleeding from his eyes and nose and ears as the rest of his team is soundly defeated. Izuku is shocked to see what has become of his opponent, but the brainwasher is rushed away first to Recovery Girl, and then to hospital once it is discovered that he isn't waking up.

Everyone is left in confusion about this, and it is eventually decided that Izuku's connection of One for All and its throne world, not to mention how the past wielders living within One for All, grants him a form of immunity to mind control quirks. However, it still doesn't explain the violence of the rejection of Shinso's attempt to control him, at least until Izuku is able to talk with the One for All users and they reveal just how dangerous someone intruding into the throne world is, as a single breach into the throne world can create a entryway for anyone to break in.

Meanwhile, on route to the hospital, Shinso's ambulance is intercepted by armed men and women with mutated bees burrowed into their brains and controlling their bodies and minds, and they steal Shinso away to interrogate him for how he was able to enter One for All's throne world.

Back at the Sports Festival, Bakugo's team goes up against Kendo's, but the Class 1-A fighters are able to overpower Kendo's team and defeat them just as viciously as they had before. Todoroki is nervous to work alongside Bakugo due to his explosive quirk, his own burns itching every time they sound off, the heat making them ache. However, he is able to keep going due to his ice powers and win the match, though the frost is beginning to get to him.

Elsewhere, Izuku ends up meeting with Endeavour, who is much more dour in this story than in canon. He's still as blunt and serious as in the main story, but there's a serious sense of melancholy to his actions and words, as he tells Izuku to simply prove that his son is the strongest person there is.

Izuku, however, tells Endeavour that Todoroki is his own person and can make his own choices, and leaves. There's no bashing speech like in a lot of fanfics, there's no condemnation, there's just that simple statement, and then he leaves.

Soon, Izuku's team goes up against Bakugo's team, and instead of fighting his childhood bully, he goes to battle Todoroki, and encourages him to think about himself and not his father, to put his life before anyone else's and think for himself for once.

And that is what gets Todoroki to accept himself and embrace his fire, pushing away the words of his father and finally beginning the path to put his past demons to bed as he unleashed his flames-

Just as Bakugo finally lands a hit on Izuku, sending him out of the ring just as the rest of his team loses their match.

Izuku's team is defeated and Bakugo's moves up to face off against each other. However, Izuku finds that he doesn't really mind this, as he helped Todoroki begin the process of healing and self-recovery.

Now all that's left is to figure out what to do with Endeavour...

Meanwhile, Bakugo and Todoroki are paired off against Yaoyorozu and Kirishima, and the former pair are able to defeat the latter after a long struggle. Kirishima and Momo are put against each other for third place, and Momo ends up coming out on top and claiming third place for herself.

And then it is the final match of the Sports Festival, of Bakugo and Todoroki facing each other, ready to decide the winner of the event-

Only for Todoroki to announce that he is not only dropping out of the Sports Festival, but he's also leaving U.A. and the hero course.

Izuku is shocked to hear this, having not expected the advice and help that he gave Todoroki to result in this, and Bakugo is furious at the thought of being handed a victory that he hasn't earned, as Todoroki's dropping out means that he is automatically made the winner of the Sports Festival. So, when the award ceremony comes, he ends up throwing his medal to the ground and stomping off, claiming that he hadn't earned it and didn't want it from a hollow victory.

(In this story, Bakugo isn't tied to the podium like in canon. I find that scene to be a bit funky, and not in a good way.)

Elsewhere, Izuku catches up with Todoroki, and asks to know why he's leaving, as he had never expected Todoroki to make a move such as the one he just did. Todoroki then explains that Izuku's words during their match had inspired him to finally look at himself and what he wants in his life, and explains that the only reason that he wanted to be a hero was to spite his father, and even then that had been vague and nebulous. He had no real idea what he wanted to do with his life beyond that goal, and now, he was finally feeling the weight of it on him.

It was time he started thinking about himself for once, and not his father.

So, he leaves U.A., and moves in with his older brother to begin searching for a new purpose in his life. Izuku is left stunned, as he had never expected things to go this way at all.

Meanwhile, it turns out that Izuku doesn't need to do anything at all about Endeavour, as, in his confusion and desire to understand why his son made the decision that he had, he realises on his own that he has done nothing but abuse his own children and heir out of misguided grief and anger at the world, and has completely destroyed any connections that he has to his family - or rather, the people that he could've once called family.

However, he can't just stop being the number two hero, and he can't just air out his dirty laundry like that. If he did step down, then Rei and his children would lose all their sources of income, as he had been paying for Rei's care and none of his other children were working (as again, Fuyumi had quit her teaching job to take care of Rei full time) so they had no independent sources of income. So, for now, he was stuck as the number two hero, swallowing down his own guilt and living in misery, all alone at the top thanks to the consequences of his own actions.

He ends up confessing it all to All Might though, and while the number one hero rightfully vocalises his disgust at Endeavour and what he has done, he refuses to help him, telling Endeavour that he must make up for his crimes on his own, with no one else, as his own punishment.

It is a messy situation that leaves a bitter taste in everyone's mouths, and Izuku is left uncertain about how to feel about the entire event. Even when he talks about it with All Might and the previous One for All users inside the throne world, all that they can say is that life is messy and complicated, and rarely has a happy, conclusive ending.

But there are other things to worry about. Throughout the Sports Festival, many of the spectators and participants have complained about bees swarming over the stadium, and of many of them, heroes and civilians alike, being stung by bees.

However, these bees are being controlled by Kuin Hachisuka, the Queen Bee, who's insects have ben mutated and reshaped by paracausal forces, the same forces that have reshaped herself into a servant to a darker cause. Now, her bees are enhanced by Resonant energies, and the larvae that are injected into the people that they sting - negating their need to go through the eye and removing their most obvious tell - will wriggle their way into their brains and take them over, adding them all to her new hive mind and turning them all to her collective purpose, all in the name of her new dark master...

Later, when Class 1-A and 1-B, still reeling from Todoroki's sudden relationship, are given the internship submission results of the Sports Festival, it is revealed that Bakugo's team actually scored less than Izuku's team. This is because, despite their quick and efficient combat styles and even their success at the Sports Festival, they did not work together and let their own objectives and vendettas get in the way, and made themselves out poorly on the long run of the Sports Festival. Contrast that to Izuku's team, who, while not winning, still displayed excellent teamwork with each other, camaraderie, and working to accomplish all their goals together, as one.

(Much of the Sports Festival (outside of the Todoroki storyline) is centred around the deconstruction of Sword Logic and its simplicity through Bakugo and showcasing how ultimately self-defeating the ideology is and how the 'Survival of the fittest' mentality only tends of work in the short term, especially when in comparison to those that act in defiance of the Sword Logic and embrace complexity and thinking about things in the long term, such as Izuku and his teammates.)

Meanwhile, Class 1-B are given their internships, and Reiko, Yui, and Kamakiri make contact with an unseen figure, telling them of paracausal readings being detected within the city of Hosu, and the three students chose to have their internships in and near the city.

Elsewhere, Shigaraki is meeting with Stain, much like in canon. However, there is a stark difference here to canon itself, as Stain isn't working alone anymore.

He's a leader of the Cult of Nezarec, a mostly human cult who have taken command of Nezarec's Pyramid Ship on the moon, and have been using braindead Psions donated from them from their allies on the Moon as conduits for the Nightmares to empower them with the fear of others.

And he's here to finalise his plans with Shigaraki and his Dread forces and Nomu in the League of Villains, along with Queen Bee and her many bodies, for the League's attack on Hosu and the terror that they'll bring.

Soon enough, Izuku finds himself on his internship in Hosu with Gran Torino, but he finds that he isn't able to learn much from All Might's mentor. One for All is simply in such a different state than it was with All Might, with the infused powers of Light and Darkness coursing through him, on top of the alien aspect of the throne world and the previous users inside it, that Gran Torino simply doesn't know where to start. The real danger for Izuku comes in trying to use One for All in any kind of combat capacity, as both the Light and Darkness in One for All clash against each other, and require Izuku to achieve a form of balance within himself before he can use them for combat.

However, he will soon get his chance as the city of Hosu comes under attack from both the the League of Villains and their Nomu and Dread, the Nomu themselves spreading a paracausal Fungal agent known as Egregore with each death that they bring about, either through their killing or through being killed themselves.

Soon, Hosu is overrun by Nomu Dread alike, with Reapers (the reshaped villains turned into Dread), Weavers, Attendants, Grim, Husks, Omen and Harbinger Subjugators, and Tormentors marching alongside Resonance-infused and Egregore-infested Nomu, spreading death and despair wherever they go, and generating more Egregore

(Basically, Hosu has become a patrol zone.)

The heroes rush to Hosu to try and push back the League of Villains, but find themselves being pushed back by the Dread and the Nomu and are unable to go through the fields of Egregore spreading all across the city as they are killed in droves by the reshaped villains and alien creatures at their command, not to mention the Resonant technology that they possessed.

Izuku finds himself caught in the madness of the attack on Hosu, and ends up getting stung by a bee in the panic. However, his connection to the Light and Dark allows him to sense the parasitic larvae crawling up through his body, meaning that he can get it out of him. However, that means scratching deep into his skin and tearing apart his flesh to get to it, eventually having to settle for using a shattered piece of glass as a knife to dig it out, leaving part of his flesh bloody and raw and exposing the bone underneath as he stomps on the parasitic larvae, killing it.

However, it's suddenly the least of his problems as he is attacked not by the Dread or the Nomu, but by the Queen Bee's unwilling thrall, all of them extensions of the Queen Bee's will and attempting to infect him with the bee larvae by projectile vomiting it into his mouth and wounds (kind of like the rage zombies from 28 Days Later), all in an attempt to gain access to One for All's throne world...

But Izuku, in a brief moment of panic, momentarily gains Prismatic balance and uses the Dark and Light to burn away the larvae, saving himself and severing the Queen Bee's connections to her bodies around him, though it unfortunately results in their deaths.

In this transcendence, Izuku is also able to interact with the Darkness of the Egregore, and begins to use his Light to burn them away, giving the heroes the chance to finally advance and begin taking on the Dread themselves.

And that is when Reiko, Yui, and Kamakiri make their move. They had been chasing paracausal energies all throughout the city of Hosu, and had been using their internships as a cover to investigate. Now using the disaster as cover, the three begin to go to work, wiping out entire platoons of Dread and even taking out a few Nomu along the way before they're able to link up with Izuku.

However, that's when they realise that the League of Villains' attack is just a smokescreen: the real purpose of the attack is for the Queen Bee to infect as many bodies as she can, whether they be dead or alive, and add them to her collective consciousness. What's more, she's using a link into the Ascendant Plane to command her larvae and bodies alongside the Dread, and is creating new monsters known as the Stingers (basic bee-themed creatures that serve as support enemies utilising Strand and Stasis-based attacks, known as the Wasp (Strand) and Mosquito (Stasis) respectively) and the Quills (insectoid monsters that serve as major boss and mini-boss type enemies) alongside the possessed hordes, creating a new faction known as the Swarm.

(Basically, Queen Bee and her Swarm are becoming the eighth Destiny faction.)

So, the three students, alongside Izuku (who's connection to the Light and Dark has allowed him to begin rapidly healing from his wounds) jump through the rift to the Ascendant Realm to face the Queen Bee, fighting through wave after wave of Dread and mindless bodies to get there as they traverse the Sea of Screams.

But during this time, Reiko gets taken out by a stray shot, and ends up falling to the ground as a corpse...

Only for a little drone to materialise next to her and revive her in a burst of light.

Reiko, Yui, and Kamakiri are all Guardians, the first Lightbearers of a new age. Reiko is the Warlock Fireteam leader wielding the Arc Chaos Reach super, Yui is a Titan wielding the Void Twilight Arsenal super, and Kamakiri was a Hunter with the Hunter Blade Barrage super. Together, this new Fireteam, plus Izuku and his connection of One for All's throne world, are able to breach through the Queen Bee and League of Villains defences and lay siege to the Proxy of Royalty, the mindless Eliksni who had become infected with one of the Queen Bee's parasites and turned into a vessel of the Queen's control over her growing number of bodies in Hosu.

After an intense struggle, the fireteam and Izuku are able to put the poor Eliksni out of his misery and kill him, severing the Queen Bee's connection to her various hosts in Hosu and causing all the bees in her freshly made victims to self-destruct, killing them all instantly.

The League of Villains, similarly, go on the retreat, their Dread forces fleeing the battle as the Nomu are picked off by the heroes and the Egregore is purged thanks to Izuku's Light.

However, despite the heroes' victory, it is a pyrrhic one, as many heroes and civilians have died during the battle, including all the victims of Queen Bee's parasites.

And even then, the League of Villains have won in a way, as while they were unsuccessful in getting new bodies for Queen Bee to inhabit, they succeeded in spreading terror across hero society, fuelling descent and despair, and thereby providing more fuel for the Cult of Nezarec for them to generate more of their Nightmares, providing them even more power than before.

But elsewhere, Kirishima was present at the Hosu maelstrom, and he ends up getting cornered by a group of the Dread...

And is killed by them.

But after the battle, when all the Dread have fled and the Egregore has been burnt away, a lone Ghost, escaping from the Sea of Screams and the wilds of the Ascendant Realm, finds Kirishima's body and resurrects him, his body rising up with no memory of his past life and no idea of what's going on, and wanders off into the shadows of the city.

Later on, Izuku is approached by Reiko and her team once again, and they invite her over to her home, where other members of Class 1-B are there, not Guardians, but other followers of the Light who are being introduced to Reiko's circle of allies one by one.

They are the Court of Light, a secretive alliance made up of humans, Cabal, and Eliksni from the Cabal Imperium and House of Light respectively, all of whom are searching for the Traveller, which has been lost in the Ascendant Realm, and to stop the forces of Darkness from spreading out across Earth and the Sol System.

As it turns out, Reiko, Yui, and Kamakiri all died young before they were resurrected as Guardians. Reiko was a stillborn, and Yui and Kamakiri all died to separate villain attacks. Their resurrections means means that there are Ghosts that are slipping through the Ascendant Plane and into real space, which means that they have a real chance against those that use the esoteric forces of the Black Fleet and the Darkness to their own ends.

They are fighting to save the whole world, and Izuku's connection to One for All's throne world may just provide them with the key to finding the Traveller, stopping whatever plans of destruction that their enemies might have, and restoring everything that they've lost when the Traveller left them.

But Izuku, overwhelmed by the enormity of everything that he's learning, can do nothing but leave, desperately trying to wrap his head around everything that he has just learnt. He can't even find it in himself to tell All Might about it, and so he keeps quiet on the subject, with not even the previous wielders of One for All able to help him, as not even they truly understand the scope of the conflict that is breaking out around them.

Soon, the finals come and go, but Class 1-A are in no mood to celebrate with two of their numbers down, Todoroki having left and Kirishima gone missing. In an attempt to alleviate their concerns and troubles, All Might would invite Izuku to I-Island for a spell, and would introduce him to Melissa and David Shield whilst they are working on a new project together, one sponsored by the HPSC, apparently.

But, Izuku and his friends in Class 1-A aren't alone on the island, as Reiko - along with Yui and Kamakiri - has followed them here as well, having been tracking the paracausal energies that have been emanating from I-Island and trying to figure out what the scientists there are working on. Izuku is still conflicted about what to think about Reiko and her allies, and is resistant to her trying to bring him into the Court of Light's fold, finding it difficult to understand the sheer gravity of the stakes that are at hand, not to mention how he is still reeling from his previous death, the sheer amount of pain that trying to use the Light and Darkness causes him when they're not in balance, and everything that has happened and that he has been told.

However, that is when Queen Bee and her countless bodies consumed by her hive mind attack the island, seeking the secrets and powers within the floating artificial construct. All Might and the heroes rush to the defence of the island, but find themselves overwhelmed as the parasitic hive mind begins to add more and more bodies to their collective consciousness. Not even David Shield, Melissa's father, is safe, as he is infected with one of the bee larvae and turned into another extension of the Queen Bee's will.

Soon, the Queen Bee's hordes begin flowing down into the underbelly of I-Island, looting and pilfering and killing and consuming as they go. Izuku and Reiko follow them down, and find that the mindless hordes are swarming around the island's more secretive project, the one being sponsored by the HPSC:

A Pyramid Ship, filled with Black Fleet technology, and a fully functional Radial Mast, along with a Black Fleet Light suppressor that begins dampening the powers of the Light within Reiko and Izuku, leaving the Darkness powers in Izuku to run amuck and begin destabilising the throne world itself.

The Queen Bee's minions go on the attack, and Reiko and Izuku are forced to flee into the Ascendant Realm to hunt down the Queen Bee. Realising that the Queen is using the Pyramid Ship to birth more of her parasitic bees and spread them out, and has now connected herself to the Pyramid Ship and taken control of it, raising it up from the ground and using it to spread a swarm of bees all across I-Island, infecting hundreds of people, and creating more Stinger and Quill monsters to begin spreading her Swarm across the world.

So, Izuku is forced to team up with Reiko and her fireteam, alongside Melissa as they go to war with the Swarm to free I-Island, taking down throngs of bee-infected civilians alongside Stinger and Quill enemies from the Swarm, only for their powers to be dampened by the Radial Mast currently on the ship. Even worse is when the Queen Bee starts pulling forces from the Ascendant Plane to assist her.

Not the Dread, but an army of Scorn, led by the undead Virixas, Once-Kell, in a past life a ruler of the House of Wolves, now one of many Kells reborn into Scorn and the Queen Bee's right hand monster.

Now, with not just the Swarm but the Scorn hounding on them, Izuku is forced to try and return to his state of balance and equilibrium that he was back in Hosu, but finds that he is unable to conjure forth the Light like he did back then, only to find that, with the Light suppressor online, he is unable to do so and is rolling in the Darkness...

However, in parallel to Hosu, instead of embracing the Light, Izuku instead gives himself to Darkness, and conjures forth the powers of Strand and Stasis to destroy the Swarm and Scorn enemies hounding him.

In embracing the Darkness, Izuku creates a large enough blast to destroy the Light suppressor as it is being taken away to the Queen Bee's Pyramid ship, killing dozens of Swarm and Scorn monsters, but also destroying his physical body and returning him to One for All's throne world once again.

However, the Queen Bee's Swarm and Scorn forces are still in play, the vast swarms of Bee parasites are beginning to spread out across the ocean and are reaching the coast, and no one - not the heroes and not the Court of Light - can bring their forces to bear out of fear of being infected, and the Pyramid Ship is still operational and hovering over the damaged I-Island, the Queen's minions harvesting the artificial island and all the people trapped inside.

There's no time to delay. Reiko, Yui, and Kamakiri gathered as many of their allies as they can - Melissa, Ochako, and even Izuku once he leaves the throne world - and make their move on the Pyramid Ship.

It's time for a raid, which I have dubbed the Obsidian Swarm raid, which would take place through what is now designated as the Infested Pyramid due to the Swarm and Scorn populating it and for all the Egregore that is covering the walls.

So, Reiko and her fireteam make their way through the Infested Pyramid, burning through Swarm monster and Scorn zombie alike.

Their first encounter, they fight on the outside of the Pyramid Ship to gain entry and besting the Swarm Lords (a trio of pro-heroes that were infected and mutated into bee monsters) in combat, requiring them to travel alongside the edge of the Pyramid's outer body, through the gaps and groves, killing off the Swarm Lords and accompanying Scorn lesser units and collecting their Resonant artifacts to gain entry.

Their second encounter involves shutting down the production of the bee parasites, which would involve them killing Scorn Chieftains known as the Incubators, who are visibly mutated with bee larvae growing in their necrotising stomachs and using their Resonant larvae to access and expose the cores to the genetic factories, allowing them to destroy them.

Their third encounter would have them going through the incubator factory for the Swarm's Stinger and Quill mutations, fighting Swarm enemies led by Scorn major and elite enemies, and timing themselves on specific plates to unlock three sets of codes to shut down the factory and kill the mutations in their hibernation crystals.

The fourth encounter would have them accessing the ship's inner chambers known as the Sanctum to secure and destroy the Radial Mast, only for it to be defended by the Queen Bee's chief lieutenant, Virixas, Once-Kell. The fireteam would have to target the Quill major enemies that Virixas has bonded himself to through Resonant links, and then use the Strand gauntlets dropped by Stinger enemies to disrupt the Radial Mast through its attached Pyramid devices before dealing damage to and eventually killing Virixas via dropping the Radial Mast on him and crushing him to his second death.

The fifth encounter would be an escort mission, where the fireteam would have to escort the Radial Mast from the Pyramid ship's Sanctum to the reactor room, in which they must pass through several barriers made out of Egregore resembling bee hives and fight through various Swarm and Scorn enemies and defeat major and elite Quill enemies known as the Royal Retainers, culminating in a battle against a series of infected heroes known as the Royal Knights. Each time, the fireteam must use Resonance from the Radial Mast to grow certain parts of the fleshy barriers to block out enemies attempting to impede their progress, whilst also using Light to burn away the parts of the barrier that are impeding their progress.

The sixth encounter would have them gaining entry into the Pyramid Ship's reactor room with the intent to use the Radial Mast to channel both Light and Resonance into the Pyramid Ship, overload its systems, and blow them both up. However, they must first fight their way through dozens of Scorn and Swarm enemies to do so, alongside a series of once-Hive Shriekers now modified by Black Fleet technology (think the Zoetic Lockset) now known as the Eyes of Conservation, changed to now fire swarms of bee larvae with the ability to explode in proximity to a target (like a Taken Centurion's Axiom Dart), and must complete a series of decoding puzzles to shut down each Dread Shrieker and chain it's accompanying reactor to the Radial Mast, before collecting the artifacts known as the Harmonious Links, hook them to both the Radial Mast and the Pyramid Ship's reactors four times, and then crank it up to full and flood the reactors with excess Light and Darkness energies, destroying them and beginning the Pyramid ship's destruction.

Then, as the ship begins to crumble all around them and fall to the ground, the fireteam move onto the seventh encounter, which is the final battle against the Queen Bee herself, who's primary human body has mutated into a massive abomination, a monstrous creature that has many bodies of those possessed by her larvae melded into her grotesque flesh, and is able to rip them off her body with her many insectoid arms and deploy them as specialised Stinger enemies with Strand abilities (think the Rat King from The Last of Us Two) known as Serrated Wasps. In this battle, the fireteam must eliminate the Resonant-infused Scorn Abominations known as the Royal Attendants and use their dropped Resonant Splinters overload the Resonant generators powering the Queen Bee's shields. From there, they must kill the Serrated Wasps and use the Stand artifacts that they leave behind to destabilise the Queen Bee and render her vulnerable, leaving her open for attack, and then repeat the process two more times to enact two more damage phases, all the while fighting through Quill major units and Swarm infected units alongside Scorn fodder units.

And then, after all their efforts, the fireteam are able to kill the parasitic monster known as the Queen Bee, goring the creature and destroying its connection to its still living bee larvae parasites through a burst of lingering Light from the remains of the Radial Mast, leading them all to self-destruct and killing their hosts, ending her threat once and for all...

But all this does is lead into the final encounter of the Obsidian Swarm raid, which is an escape from the Pyramid Ship as it begins to break up and explode all around them. This final encounter would require them to platform over fields of fire and damaging Resonance energy, all while avoiding Quill and Stinger units alongside Scorn Ether Totems and Dread Shriekers, all before having to fight a Scorn Walker known as the Royal Steed, supported by Dread Shriekers, Stinger enemies, and Scorn Chieftains designated as the Queen's Vengeance. The final encounter is timed, and the fireteam will have to use a combination of all previous encounters (killing the Queen's Vengeance Chieftains to get them to drop a code, stand on plates to expose Pyramid Ship internal systems to input the codes, and use the codes to drop the shields on the Royal Steed Scorn Walker to deal damage and destroy it) to unlock a portal out of the Pyramid Ship...

And to safety on I-Island, where the fireteam watches the Infested Pyramid crash to the ground in a ball of unstable Resonant energy and fire, the Egregore within serving as excellent kindling for the flames as the Swarm and Scorn inside are all burnt alive in the conflagration, marking the death of the Queen Bee and the end of her threat, and the Swarm's failure to secure I-Island, the Radial Mast and Pyramid assets, and the Queen Bee's failure.

This is a defeat for the forces of Darkness. A total defeat, and one that they cannot scratch any source of pyrrhic advantage from.

And now, with the mass culling of the bee parasites stopping the Swarm's ability to spread and infect others, as well as the deaths of the hundreds of bodies that had once been controlled by the Queen Bee, the Court of Light are finally able to bring in their allied Ketches and Cabal warships to bear and begin making short work of the Scorn's fortifications, forcing the remains of the Undead Eliksni on the retreat, bringing the remaining Stinger and Quill mutations with them.

The Court of Light and the forces of heroism have won this day, but it has come at a grave cost for them. Hundreds of innocent people have been killed by Queen Bee and her Swarm, and hundreds more who were infected all across Japan have been killed as well from the deaths of the bee parasites within them. What's more is that David Shield is amongst those losses, and Melissa Shield must contend with the fact that her father is dead, leaving her with no family outside of her honorary uncle All Might, whom is still processing the grievous loss of one of his few and closest friends. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is beginning to wake up to the alien forces that are now fighting across the world, and are now beginning to fear the godly forces that are shaping the Earth in their image.

And Izuku, upon seeing the sheer level of destruction that the forces of Darkness have brought onto the innocent, realises that he can't run from the conflict that is fast approaching, and begins to seek out Reiko and her friends to learn how to balance the Light and Darkness within himself.

But elsewhere, in the Rings of Saturn and aboard the formerly-abandoned Dreadnaught, once a Hive flagship now infested with Taken and Dread, the Mother consults with her generals and agents.

There's Shigaraki, Garaki, and Kurogiri of the League of Villains, who stand alongside their Dread agents.

There is Stain and the other two leaders of the Cult of Nezarec, who have brought with them their newly created Nightmares and Psion proxies of Nezarec's will from their base in the Scarlet Keep on the moon.

There's Freeborn Otzot and her chief Psion lieutenants Yirix and Amtec, who leads the Cabal army known as the Undying Legion, melded together from the Shadow Legion, the Psion Conclave, and the remnants of the Red Legion into one unified force. They have wiped out the remnants of the Hidden Swarm Hive brood on the moon and colonised the planetoid for their own, making their home in the derelict Leviathan. The Undying Legion stands to create a utopia for all Psion people and have been using the Leviathan's abandoned cloning machines to create an army of Cabal ready to conquer Earth at a moment's notice.

There's is Fikrul, Kell of Kells, and his own undead lieutenants Skolas, Scorned Wolf, Draksis, Scorned Devil, Craask, Scorned King, and Solkis, Scorned Winter, deceased Kells of the Eliksni past who have been risen by Dark Ether and now serve as leaders of the Scorn, all whom wish to turn the rest of the Eliksni into Scorn and serve as their Kells-eternal, having already done so for what's left of the House of Dusk and Salvation, adding Stasis-wielding Scorn to their arsenal. Their ambitions would make them all Kell of Kells of a dead people for all eternity.

And then there is the leaders of the Meta Liberation Army, who seek to liberate all quirks across the world, and have all ingested Worm Larvae to do so. Now each member of the Meta Liberation Army, all in their thousands from their weakest soldier to their highest leader, hold a Worm Larvae in their bellies, feeding their power and tithes as tribute to their new Worm Gods and being granted power and immortality in turn.

All of them answer to the Mother, the god of the Taken and the Dread, controller of the Dreadnaught and Oryx's vacant throne world, and architect of the Ascendancy, and all of them work to achieve a state of being that the Mother refers to as the Harmony, where all life exists without any divisions or anger or hatred, where they all exist as one singular people and live in an eternal peace for all of time and space.

But to accomplish that, they need the Traveller, and access to its Pale Heart...

But unfortunately, the Traveller has been missing ever since the moment of the Witness' death, when it released a great burst of light and vanished into the Ascendant Plane, resetting the entirety of Earth and the solar system and granting humanity those strange powers of the Light and Darkness known as quirks.

Whatever the Traveller has become now, an evolved being of both Light and Darkness melded together into whatever heightened state of existence that it embodies now, it has been lost to the Sea of Screams, untethered and unfound by anyone...

And it is the one thing, the only thing that the Ascendancy needs to make their plans a reality. They've already ripped apart the Veil, deconstructed it and pulled it to pieces after flattening Neomuna on Neptune and draining it of all its power. All they need now is the wellspring of Light that is the Traveller, and all their plans will be accomplished.

However, in the meeting, the Mother is informed of the death of the Queen Bee and the destruction of the Radial Mast, putting their plans on hold until they can recover the blueprints of the Radial Mast and begin the construction of a new one. This is the first real defeat that the Ascendancy has suffered, as their previous battles have either been feints or inconsequential. However, this proves to be the first time that the Ascendancy has come out the complete losers on the battlefield, and it leaves them all realising that their enemies in the Court of Light are far more dangerous than they had anticipated. Plus, there were the children in U.A. who have proved to be a spanner in their plans, and that's not including the Lightbearers and Izuku's throne world in the mix.

So, the Mother tasks Shigaraki with doing what the Queen Bee couldn't and capture Izuku, so they could use the method that Shinso had accidently used to gain entry into One for All's throne world and locate the Traveller. She then tells Shigaraki to take command of what's left of the Queen Bee's Swarm (that being the Quills and the Wasp and Mosquito Stingers) and to start assembling his Darkbearers. She then instructs Stain and the Cult of Nezarec to contact their spy in U.A.'s ranks and have them begin feeding the Ascendancy more information on the Guardians and Izuku himself.

Then, she orders Garaki to have his House of Ruin project ready as soon as possible. By her power and Garaki's twisted science, All for One would have a thousand bodies, each one capable of taking a quirk from another.

Meanwhile, as they are being returned to the mainland from the ruins of I-Island, with Melissa and the other survivors in tow, All Might questions Reiko and her Lightbearer fireteam for their actions against the Swarm and Scorn, as well as their involvement with the Court of Light and how much they actually know about their enemies. Reiko is aware that All Might is probing them for information, but are surprised when he starts asking them about the League of Villains, as she and the Court of Light had pegged them for a simple group of mercenaries and villains brought in by the forces of Darkness - who they now know to be called the Ascendancy thanks to recovered data crystals from the ruins of the Infested Pyramid - and given the Dread to act as additional muscle for their operations.

All Might is solemn at the fact that they don't know anything about All for One and his powers, as he had been hoping that they would know more about his apparent survival than less. However, when he makes it clear that they need to tell the authorities about their non-quirk powers and what they know about what they are up against, Reiko tells him not to. The Pyramid Ship inspection and construction of the Radial Mast were sponsored by the HPSC. Reiko doubts that the HPSC is aligned with the Ascendancy, but they must've been building them for some reason, and that they must've acquired knowledge about it from somewhere, meaning that they've been possibly compromised. Plus, there's no way of knowing if there's anyone else in positions of power that haven't been turned to the Ascendancy's side.

For now, the Court of Light are on their own.

So, Reiko and her fireteam go to meet with fellow Court agents the Crawler and Pop-Step, who have had previous run-ins with the dark force that they now know to be the Ascendancy, as they had worked with the Knuckleduster to destroy the Villain Factory, who had been creating entire factories for Hive Worm symbiotes from pieces of the remaining Worm Gods, that being Eir, Ur, and Yul, due to the death of Xita and their inability to create more Worms thanks to her loss. The Naruhata Vigilantes had been able to destroy the Worm production lines and defeat the Villain Factory, including the previous iteration of Queen Bee and the hero-pretender Number Six, who had bonded himself with a Worm and become a monstrously powerful being that they had only been able to destroy thanks to the sacrifice of Knuckleduster.

In their meeting, Reiko and the vigilantes conclude that the Queen Bee must've subjected her bee larvae and herself to the same process that the deceased Rhulk had used on Xita, the Nurturing Worm, to create her Worm children, or infused them with Resonance to give them their parasitic nature. What's worse is that this means that there is another factory out there that had been creating the Queen Bee's larvae, and that they could be producing more larvae, or even more Worms from the Worm Gods to give to the Darkness' followers.

The Crawler and Pop-Step agree to investigate where this supposed factory might be located but warn that there may be those in power who have bonded with the Worms as well, and to be careful. Reiko agrees and goes to consult with the new Vanguard.

Meanwhile, an amnesiac Kirishima wanders the streets on his own, lost and confused as to why he can't remember anything at all, and why there is a little drone following him around named Rose who calls herself his Ghost. He doesn't understand anything that's going on, and he's not sure if he wants to even listen to whatever the Ghost says. Everything is just so perplexing to him, and he's pretty sure that he had died before. He doesn't even remember his own name.

Then, he sees a group of villains harassing an innocent woman, and his body moves on its own, casting a Thunderclash super to scatter the villains and force them to flee, saving the young woman.

Even with all his memories gone, he's still Kirishima. He's still a hero.

But what he doesn't realise is that he is being tracked by an unknown opponent. A Darkbearer and adept of the Acolytes of Nezarec named Toga, who is eager to make a new friend through her powers of Resonance.

Elsewhere, Izuku asks Reiko and her fireteam about the nature of Light and Darkness, especially because he must balance Light and Darkness itself to be able to generate power and control One for All and the throne world. Reiko explains to Izuku that the Light is a power linked to the physical world, with powers like Arc, Solar, and Void being linked to physical concepts, and discards memory and previous lives to begin new lives in the physical. Darkness, by contrast, is more focused on metaphysical concepts, such as consciousness and memory, with Stasis, Strand, Resonance, and Deepsight linked to the unconscious world of memory and emotion. However, its link to corrupting forces has made it come to be viewed as a negative well of power by Reiko and the Court of Light, and Izuku finds himself lost as he struggles to balance the two primordial forces within himself.

Back with Kirishima (though he does not know that his previous name was Kirishima), he finds himself being hunted by the Darkbearer Toga and the Acolytes of Nezarec, finding himself being tormented by the nightmare manifestations that the braindead Psions at their command can conjure forth.

But then, suddenly, he encounters a young girl by the name of Eri, who is bloody and terrified and searching for someone she has heard so much about.

She sees Kirishima, and calls him Red because of his dyed hair, which is fading away from a lack of maintenance. Kirishima, after protecting her from the Acolytes of Nezarec, decides to take it up as his new name. Now calling himself Red, the Lightbearer promises to protect Eri and help her find that which she is searching for.

However, Eri is being guided along by an unknown force, one that has killed her previous captors and bonded with her to achieve its own alien goals.

Eri has been bonded to Aesop the Soverign, a mythical Vex Mind that has gained sentience and subverted the will of the Vex to its own ends, seeking to gain power through Eri's quirk and control the paracausal natures of Light and Darkness for its own designs.

(This plot thread was born because I figured that Eri would be a good mix for the Vex. You know, her quirk can rewind things, which is related to time, and the Vex are all about time travel, so it makes sense in my head.

Also, Aesop is a real character within the lore. He appears for only one lore card in Lightfall, but his inclusion would help to give the Vex some real character and direction.

There was also a thing that Calus said during Penumbra, where apparently if you indoctrinate one Vex Mind, the entire subtype comes with it. I figured that it would be cool if we played with that through Eri and the Vex's ability to simulate everything save for paracausal forces.)

Elsewhere, Izuku and his peers in Class 1-A and B are taken away to the Wild Wild Pussycat's forest and compound for their summer camp training, the teachers trying to give the students the chance to actually be children and at peace and to finally start learning instead of fighting. During this time, Izuku meets Kota, who hates him for his ability to return from the dead and asks why he gets to survive forever while his parents have to die. Izuku can't find a satisfactory answer to his question.

However, things soon begin to go to hell once again, as the League of Villains attack, unleashing their Nomu and Dread forces and unleashing carnage onto the heroes and students, as Shigaraki attacks with the intent to kill the Lightbearers and capture Izuku to get into One for All's throne world.

Even worse is when Shigaraki brings several of his fellow Darkbearers into play, consisting of Muscular, Moonfish, and the craven Dabi, who seems especially eager to start burning people, especially members of the Todoroki family. However, upon learning that his brother has dropped out of U.A. and the rest of the Todoroki family has split up, Dabi decides to simply hunt them down one by one and kill them as painfully as possible, all before finding Endeavour and killing him in one last blaze of glory, as vengeance for everything that has been done to him...

Completely unaware as to how Fuyumi Todoroki and her mother Rei are currently being approached not by one of the Mother's minions, but by the Mother herself...

Who uses the Light to heal Rei's grievous injuries, enthralling her and her daughter into her services and turning them into her acolytes as she infuses them with the Light and Darkness.

Back in the forest, things are going to hell in a handbasket for the students and Lightbearers, and Reiko's fireteam are forced to call in reinforcements from the Court of Light to help fend off the Dread and Darkbearers, resulting in the forest turning into a warzone as the two sides clash with each other.

In the middle of the chaos, Izuku is forced to contend with a Resonance-infused Muscular, who continues to return from death thanks to his Wraith, becoming more and more driven by his bloodlust with each revival as the mad villain hunts down a terrified Kota, intent on killing the child of the Water Hose duo and finishing off what he started years ago. Each time, Izuku would use whatever power of the Light and Dark he is able to manifest to try and slow down the villain, but it isn't enough. Izuku is still way too inexperienced to be able to achieve balance within himself.

However, at this point, the previous One for All users are finally gaining the strength that they need to return to the real world...

And Nana Shimura summons herself forward, defeating Muscular with little effort and crushing his Wraith, ending the villain's rampage once and for all.

However, the battle has left Izuku tired, wounded, and fatigued, and that leaves him vulnerable to the Dread forces, though he is quickly intercepted by Momo, Shoji, and Ojiro, who promise to take him to safety.

And that is when Momo summons forth a blade of Resonance and slashes at Shoji and Ojiro, summoning forth her Wraith, whom she refers to as Dao, to call the Dread to her and to bind Izuku as her captive.

Yaoyorozu Momo is the Ascendancy's spy. She is an Acolyte of Nezarec like her parents, who are the other leaders of the Acolytes alongside Stain, who is a Darkbearer as well. Momo was made into a Darkbearer when her parents sacrificed her as a baby and was raised again by the Mother to now serve her will and that of Nezarec's.

Momo rendezvouses with Shigaraki and delivers Izuku to him, then uses her Resonance powers to manipulate Ojiro. Shoji, and even Kota's memories – since Izuku had fled and taken Kota with him what Nana's prompting whilst she took on Muscular – to erase her kidnapping of Izuku in them, allowing her to meld back into U.A.'s fold as another student without her cover being blown. With Izuku now in tow, Shigaraki thanks Momo and then recalls his Dread forces and remaining Darkbearers, including a reluctant Dabi, who was just about to crush Yui's Ghost after burning the Guardian alive four times in a row.

The League of Villains and their Dread and Nomu escape, leaving the heroes battered, the students injured, and the Court of Light losing a dozen personnel, either wounded or dying. All Might arrives sometime after, along with a small army of heroes, and when he finds his mentor, Nana Shimura, standing over the corpse of Muscular, he is in utter shock.

Elsewhere, Izuku is strapped down to a table and picked apart by Garaki, his skin peeled open and his mind flayed using a captive Shinso's quirk. Garaki would've simply plucked Shinso's quirk out of his body like he's done to so many of his other patients before, but somehow the Light and Darkness of One for All has mixed with Shinso's quirk, making it difficult to neigh-impossible to remove it. Instead, Garaki will simply use Shinso's quirk by proxy and amplifying it using Deepsight generators to brute force his way into One for All and the throne world.

However, Garaki is quickly called away by Shigaraki to finish up his House of Ruin project, and as he does so, the Mother takes over, speaking to Izuku for the first time.

Meanwhile, All Might speaks with Nana in the aftermath of the forest battle and Izuku's kidnapping, with Gran Torino and Sir Nighteye joining them. The three men present are still shocked at Nana's survival, with Gran Torino close to tears over the return of his closest friend, and Nana is quick to thank him for raising Yagi Toshinori into the hero that she knew he could be.

But unfortunately, there's no time to have a happy reunion, as Izuku is missing, and Nana can sense the walls of the throne world being picked open for the Darkness' minions to step through. Nana suspects that it is All for One's minions and is frustrated to hear that he might still be alive from All Might, but there is a sliver of doubt within her. There's something else driving All for One's actions, if this is even him at all, she knows it.

What is the most frustrating to her is that she can't pinpoint where he is. She can sense that he's alive through the throne world's bond but can't figure out his location. And he is too inexperienced with the concepts of the throne world to figure out how to get back into it, only how to leave it. Hell, this is her first time stepping out of the throne world as well.

But that is when they get word from an injured Momo, who reveals that she was able to slip a tracker onto one of the Nomu, allowing them to track the Nomu and the League of Villains to wherever they might be.

Nana and the heroes take it, unaware of the trap that the traitorous Momo is leading them into.

Soon, All Might meets with Reiko and her fireteam, who are helping a grouping of Servitors and Eliksni Bio-Splicers to heal their recently wounded Cabal and Eliksni fighters and find them being hounded by agents of both the HPSC and the Diet. The Guardians are reluctant to answer their questions, especially since the HPSC were the ones who commissioned the construction of the Radial Mast at I-Island and the investigation of the Infested Pyramid, meaning that they know a lot more than they're letting on. All Might has to shoo them away to get time to speak to Reiko, and he asks for the Court of Light's assistance in defeating the League of Villains and recovering Izuku.

Reiko comments that she isn't in command of the Court; she is merely one of its agents, and allows All Might to contact one of its leaders on the Vanguard:

Eido, Kell of the House of Light, who quickly warns All Might of the possibility of this being a trap but offers her support anyway.

Soon, the heroes gather to plan their attack, having just received intel on the possible whereabouts of the League of Villains' hideout. However, many of the heroes express confusion when Reiko and her three fellow Guardians are brought into the meeting, disliking the idea of allowing children to fight with them. It is only when All Might informs the rest of the heroes that these Guardians are half of the fireteam that killed the Queen Bee, brought down the Infested Pyramid, and maybe even saved the world itself that the heroes begin to back off, and even then they express distrust at the complete unknown that is the Court of Light and the forces that they have in their possession, fearing a potential invasion of Earth and war.

However, at this point, they don't have much of a choice. They've seen the powers of the League of Villains and the forces that they have brought to bear, and they've seen what their ally in the Queen Bee was able to do to I-Island and the hundreds that she was able to cull. There isn't enough time for them to bring up a suitable force of heroes and others to bear, and they don't have the experience and ability to successfully battle against them. They need the Court of Light's assistance, whether they want it or not.

Elsewhere, the Mother speaks with Izuku as she pulls away at the metaphysical palisades of One for All's throne world, breaking open the barriers piece by piece as she talks, her tone being almost motherly and affectionate as she calls Izuku her son and talks gently to him, as if he is just an unruly child who has lost his way.

Izuku is left feeling disgusted by her words, making clear to this eldritch being that he is not her child. He is not her anything. The Mother, on the other hand, counters this, saying to Izuku that she considers all living things to be her children, all things in the physical and metaphysical, from the smallest microbes to the largest leviathans. She speaks of her true goal: peace. For all life across the universe to be left in eternal peace and happiness for the rest of eternity and beyond. To be left in a state of existence that she calls the Harmony, a universe where all living things exist in perfect unison, forever and ever.

Izuku asks if the concept of free will and self-existence, if the ability to choose one's existence, will continue on in this brave new world of hers. The Mother makes clear that such a thing will only lead to continued conflict and suffering, and so it will not.

Then, the Mother finally reveals who she is, or rather, what she is:

She is the Shard of the Traveller from the EDZ. The corrupted Shard given form, its poisoned Light merging with the Darkness to gain a new form and sentience, allowing it to become her and to take over the Taken and the Dread, to give them direction and purpose, and to fulfil her own ambitions.

She is all that the Traveller believes in and stands for, but twisted and distorted. She is all the Gardener's hopes and dreams, poisoned and broken and reshaped into something dark, something terrible.

And then, the Mother finally creates a crack in the walls of One for All's throne world, and she is suddenly within arm's reach of her prize.

But that must all wait, as the combined forces of the heroes and the Court of Light begin to lay siege to the League of Villains, first at their bar hideout and then at their Dread and Nomu factory. For the first time, it is the League of Villains that are caught on the backfoot, and their Dread and Nomu army find themselves being slaughtered from being caught off-guard, whilst the Darkbearers find themselves being put on the backfoot, and in the conflagration, Moonfish is dealt his final death as his Wraith is crushed, killing him for good.

And at the forefront of the charge is All Might, Nana Shimura, and Endeavour, backed by the three Guardians as they tear through Dread and Nomu alike and bring the fight to the Darkbearers.

However, that is when the Mother and the League spring their trap, and suddenly the heroes and Court of Light find themselves surrounded by hundreds of Fallen bearing the flags and colours of the newly born House of Ruin.

All of them are possessed by a fragment of All for One, from the Dregs to the Wretches, the Vandals to the Marauders, the Captains to even the Servitors and the Shanks and the Walkers and Brigs, forming together to create one singular mind across hundreds of bodies, with thousands more being awoken from cryostasis to form an army ruled by a singular mind...

And each possessed body, each empty shell, is capable of taking quirks.

The House of Ruin begin their rampaging, taking the quirks from heroes and slaughtering the Court of Light in a violent conflagration, whilst All Might and his team, including the Lightbearers, search for Izuku in the chaos...

And find him on the floor, convulsing violently as a tear in reality opens up, corrupted by Taken energy.

Nana Shimura, All Might, and the Lightbearers jump through the portal as Endeavour secures the comatose Izuku, and finds One for All's throne world in chaos and descending into corruption, the six other previous holders of One for All battling against a seemingly endless army of Taken, all led by the Mother as she begins to tear the throne world apart. And in the middle of the battle is the Taken version of All for One, ripping the world apart as he beats down on All for One's previous holders.

The Lightbearers and One for All users battle against the Taken, but find themselves unable to stand up to the endless horde as the Mother continues to tear One for All's throne world to pieces, leaving only corruption and misery in her wake.

The Lightbearers and One for All users are forced to retreat, manifesting into the real world once more and help Endeavour retreat Izuku's body away from the rampaging and mad Dabi, who is intent on making Endeavour suffer for his past deeds.

However, one of the One for All users is caught by the Mother.

All Might, who has never died and therefore never established a true connection to the throne world.

All Might, who never used the powers of Light and Darkness due to his own strength being enough.

All Might, who's connection to One for All is fading due to having passed it on without dying immediately.

All Might, who's bond with One for All is now the weakest out of all its users.

All Might, who's greatest strength is now his greatest weakness.

All Might, who the Mother successfully Takes, turning him into another one of her Taken minions.

The heroes despair at the loss of All Might, and all remaining resistance is currently in the process of being wiped out. The Ascendancy begin the first act of their true war against the forces of the Light, with the Mother Taking Cabal and Eliksni alike, the copy of All for One taking quirk after quirk through his endless bodies in the House of Ruin and his gargantuan Archons of Despair, the League of Villains and Darkbearers slaughtering the survivors through their Dread and Nomu.

However, with the Mother now in possession of One for All's throne world, she sees no further point in continuing the battle. Not while the Traveller's location is finally within reach, and One for All will be that which leads them to it.

The Mother departs, taking her newly awakened army with her and leaving the heroes and Court of Light forces utterly devastated.

The Mother's victory is absolute, and the forces of light are left bloody and broken. This round is hers, and now she and her minions now have One for All's throne world for their own.

But this isn't the end. The Court of Light and the forces of good may have lost this battle, but there is still a war to be fought, and as friends and foes alike begin to awaken and converge on Earth and the Sol System once more, either through real space or the Ascendant Plane, our heroes resolve to continue the fight against the Mother and her armies, to rescue the Traveller and the Ghosts from the Ascendant Realm, and to bring about the age of Light and peace once more, as Izuku begins to learn how to balance the Ligth and Darkness within himself to achieve Prismatic transcendence...

All the while, away from the prying eyes of both the forces of Dark and Light, Ochako steps through a Hive portal tinged by Light, and finds herself in the Court of Savathûn, where she is greeted by an unending legion of Lucent Hive as they prepare to march off to war against Xivu Arath's Wrathborn hordes in the Hive's civil war.

Then, she is greeted by Savathûn herself, and reports to the Witch Queen that everything is going according to plan...

As above Savathûn's Court, the broken Traveller hangs high above, the Pale Heart within turned into an extension of the Lucent Hive's domain.

---

"Damn, I've got a twelve-thousand word creative piece that I've got to write for my uni. God, that's going to take me forever."

*Casually writes a fifteen-thousand word story idea and drops it in a single week*

Writers are just weird like that, I guess.