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Beloved Hero All Might Dead
Five years after his final stand at Kamino, and two since the cataclysmic battle that brought down the mastermind behind the League of Villains, former number one hero All Might has passed away during the early hours of the morning at his home in Musutafu. Those close to the former hero disclosed he died peacefully in his sleep.
A private funeral for friends and colleagues will be held on Friday, followed by a public memorial service at All Might’s alma mater and former employer, U.A. All are welcome to attend and celebrate the life of Japan’s greatest hero. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to -
He stared, unblinking, at the headline of that morning’s newspaper. The longer he looked, the less the words felt real. All Might was dead. He felt untethered. Like the ground had dropped out from under him, leaving him struggling to find purchase on a surface that no longer existed. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. All Might didn’t die. He certainly didn’t die peacefully.
He clenched the newspaper in his fist and watched it disintegrate. The dust fluttered through the air before settling on the floor.
All Might was dead. Repeating that fact didn’t make it any easier to swallow, but the words were maddeningly inescapable. All Might. Dead.
Deciding he wouldn’t let the news affect him (All Might, dead), he left his hole-in-the-wall apartment for the convenience store like he did every day. Everywhere he looked, he saw All Might. Mourners flooded the streets. The air was so thick with grief he could almost taste the tears.
The newspaper said he went quietly, but this was not quiet.
“We’re interrupting this program to bring you sad news—”
He scowled at the wall of televisions outside an electronics shop and quickened his pace. But he couldn’t escape this new reality. Every screen in the city was tuned in to some sort of broadcast announcing the news.
“Heartbreaking news to report this morning—”
“A major loss for the hero world today, former hero—”
“All Might—”
“Dead.”
Even in death, everything was about All Might.
It reminded him of the days after the final battle, when the whole country had come together in the wake of All for One’s defeat. Except then, while he’d felt nothing but bone-deep exhaustion, everyone else celebrated. There had been parties in the streets, talk of a great evil that had been destroyed, questions of “where do we go from here?”
He supposed that last one was no different.
Hating All Might had been a constant in his life. It was familiar. Comforting. An option sleeping in his subconscious if things didn’t work out. If staying in the shadows proved impossible. If he changed his mind, he could always pull out his safety blanket and go back to doing what he did best: hating All Might. But if All Might was dead, what was his purpose?
He’d never considered what a world without All Might would really look like. In his head, it always came with the destruction of society. If All Might died, society would crumble with him.
But the world would move on from this. All Might was dead, but the world still spun.
As if to prove his point, his phone vibrated. He swiped the screen, opening the message.
http://tokyonewssource.co.jp/missing-persons-report
three kids in three weeks.
one mutation quirk, one strength quirk, one elemental quirk.
that fits the pattern.
look for nearby stabilizing quirks.
track them. we’re close.
sure thing, boss
not your boss anymore.
thanks.
He slid his phone back into his pocket.
He’d spent the first year after the final battle living the life of an NPC, recovering from his injuries and learning how to be human. It had been incredibly boring. Several times he almost decayed shit just so he could fight something.
And then people started going missing. Hospital and lab equipment vanished. Villains began whispering that All for One’s legacy was alive.
He was never meant to sit on the sidelines. He’d always been a main character. And there was one more boss left to fight.
He waded through a sea of impromptu memorials, refusing to disrupt his routine, and found himself tripping over people taking selfies at statues and laying flowers at the site of long ago rescues. He ducked around the latest disruption, an interview questioning random passersby about “what All Might meant to you,” and walked into a hauntingly familiar scene.
A child stood on the sidewalk a few meters ahead of him. They were scrawny, bloodstained, and barefoot. Their mouth moved, but their voice was lost in the city’s noise. Pedestrians passed like a river bending around a rock. Businessmen gave a wide berth, as if the bloodstained hands would ruin their suits. Women in dresses gave sad looks but didn’t stop. Places to be, things to do. Besides, surely a hero will come along, don’t worry.
He felt sick. Sicker when he realized that if he hadn’t already been looking for signs of trouble, he might have walked past too.
The kid caught his gaze, silently pleading.
He had a choice: do what he’d always wished someone had done for him or turn away.
Before he could do anything, the choice was made for him as the street erupted into chaos. A monster burst through the wall of a nearby shop, sending splinters and rubble flying. He didn’t even think. He pushed his way through the suddenly screaming crowd, fighting upstream towards the nomu-like creature. No, not nomu-like, an actual nomu.
The nomu roared. The kid stared at it in horror, frozen in place. There were no heroes in sight.
He pressed his hand to the ground. It fractured, disrupting the street below the nomu and knocking it off balance, giving him time to approach.
He leapt in front of the kid and grabbed the nomu’s face with five fingers.
He woke the next morning to far too many texts.
you’re famous! :D
http://heronewsdaily.co.jp/today’s-headline
Chaos in downtown Yokohama
Evil never sleeps. Just days after All Might’s death, an incident occurred reminiscent of those dark days of terror not so long ago. A monstrous villain destroyed half a downtown block before heroes arrived at the scene.
Luckily, an unidentified civilian intervened before the villain caused any injuries. Some are calling them a vigilante. Others claim this an act of heroism worthy of All Might.
We here at Hero News Daily believe this individual is none other than the mysterious vigilante known only as “Te.” As our long-time readers know, Te has been working their way through every remnant of All for One’s network, leaving nothing behind at each scene but a handprint.
That the villain in this incident was reminiscent of the fearsome Nomu created by All for One’s doctor, and that this event coincided with the death of All Might, can be no coincidence.
Who is Te? Villain or Vigilante? What do you think? Let us know in the comments!
He closed the tab, feeling uneasy.
Shimura Tenko wanted to be a hero. Shigaraki Tomura wanted to kill heroes. What did that make him now? Who was he, without All for One or All Might? Was he a vigilante, as the article suggested?
His phone buzzed in his hand.
hey now that you’re a hero can you help move furniture into my new apartment?
fuck off I’m not a hero
:)
First, it was a lost cat. Then a missing wallet, a confused tourist, and an old woman struggling with her groceries. After that, pickpockets, robbers, and several nomu loose in the mall. Then domestic disputes resolved with handprints left in the wall, a falsely accused mutant-type freed from prison transport, and a hero who took advantage of his fans left unconscious on the steps of the Hero Public Safety Commission, a sticky note stuck to his forehead with the words “do your job” scrawled in messy handwriting.
It was easy to encounter choices when they kept throwing themselves at him.
Choices to do the right thing. To fix and create instead of ruin and destroy. All for One’s defeat hadn’t magically changed things. The cracks of society still stared him in the face. He couldn’t stand by and hope and wish and pray that heroes would do something.
As pro heroes wasted time speaking about All Might’s legacy instead of doing their jobs, as love for the former hero flooded social media to the point of drowning out everything else, another story was brewing underneath. The story of a man who helped people the heroes couldn’t or wouldn’t.
#vigilanTe was trending nationwide.
kid with a stabilizing quirk went missing today. same radius as the others
there’s an old water filtration plant nearby
municipal plans show access to the sewers
that has to be it. send the schematics.
want us to come?
no.
I don’t want to risk it.
if you need us you know where to find us
don’t get caught I’m not breaking you out of jail
and don’t die
He smiled, then caught himself. He didn’t deserve them, but he couldn’t find it in himself to push them away. When the League reached out, with their loyalty and trust and friendship, when All for One confessed he never cared and had manipulated things from the start, it was easier to let Sensei go — and easier to let the others in.
The filtration plant was in a part of the city still rebuilding from the final fight against All for One. It was easy to hide in a place like this. Easy to get away with murder. Easy for heroes to write off the whole neighborhood as abandoned. Easy to skip the boring, untelevised patrols.
But that was no excuse.
He descended a set of stairs leading into the cavernous sewers, footsteps echoing around him, reverberating off the smooth walls.
A year’s worth of stolen hospital and lab equipment was set up at the bottom. The only light was from a half dozen empty nomu chambers. A flicker of relief, of satisfaction, passed through him. One chamber for each of the nomu he’d killed in the last few days.
“Ujiko!” he called out, voice echoing in the vast emptiness.
“Shigaraki!” replied a similarly echoed voice. “I always wondered if you made it out alive. Of course, I had my suspicions once a mysterious vigilante started making my life difficult. You always were too stubborn to die.”
“Seems like we have that in common,” he said, looking around the dimly lit space for Ujiko. “How did you even survive?”
“You underestimated the bond between me and my children. They willingly sacrificed their bodies to me. It was tragic, but they’ll live on in my memory. But you... you’ve been a bad boy, Shigaraki Tomura.”
Something about the way the doctor said “Shigaraki Tomura” unsettled him. He eyed the tanks with disgust. “I thought you learned your lesson. People aren’t toys.”
“Do you not like my new creations? You must have known who created them. They’ve caused quite a stir, haven’t they? And right when All Might finally died! I couldn’t have planned the timing better. Of course, it would have been better if one of my children had given him the final blow, but you can’t deny there’s something fitting about such a god among men going out like a mere mortal. But you and I...we’re no mere mortals, are we?”
Ujiko stepped into the light. The sickly glow of the tubes cast him in grim shadow, but he would’ve been grotesque even without the lighting. A lab coat stretched uncomfortably over his bulky and monstrous form. Multiple long, tentacle-like arms sprouted from his back. He still wore his signature glasses, but something about the shape of his head seemed off. With an uneasy lurch of his stomach, he realized the doctor’s brain was exposed.
“Look at what I had to do to survive. I’ve had to live in the shadows, crawl in the sewers like a rat, go months without human contact. I was lonely. You can’t blame me for wanting companionship, can you?”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“Is it not? How is what I do any different from your habit of collecting strays and giving them a new purpose? Ah, but I don’t want to upset you. You were very emotional the last time I suggested improving your comrades. Work for me, and I promise I won’t turn them into nomu.”
“I’m not here to join you,” he spat.
“Why else would you be here? Surely you’re not here to rescue those poor kids…”
He didn’t say anything. The silence was louder than any response he could have given.
Ujiko gave a sharp bark of laughter. “I thought All for One buried the hero in you. Seems I was mistaken. I should have tinkered with you earlier, despite his wishes. He might still be here if — ”
“You talk too much.” He darted forward, hand outstretched.
With surprising speed, Ujiko lashed out with one of his tentacles, nearly sweeping him off his feet. He vaulted over it, decaying the fleshy appendage. That should have been it. That should have been the end.
It wasn’t.
The doctor laughed. Before the decay could spread to his body, the arm detached and fell limply to the floor. Another arm sprouted in its place.
Two heavy tentacles whipped toward him. He ducked under the first, but the second caught him in the side, slamming him into one of the nomu chambers. He groaned, then pushed himself to his feet, a grin sliding onto his face. He hadn’t felt challenged by anything in a while.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Shigaraki. Together, we can fulfill All for One’s wishes.”
“You really think, after what you’ve done, that I’d want to help?”
“Still bitter about my offer to improve your little friends?”
He didn’t dignify that with a verbal response. When the next attack came, he was ready. He weaved through the arms, decaying any that came to close. The doctor was inexperienced and clumsy, telegraphing every movement and swinging the arms in large arcs. The only thing he had going for him was the speed at which the tentacles regenerated.
It was easy to back him into a corner, easy to knock aside the tentacles, easy to get right in his face and smile.
“Any last words?”
Ujiko’s eyes widened in fear. “Shigara—”
“That’s not my name,” he said, and he grabbed Ujiko’s throat. A choked scream escaped the doctor before dissolving into nothing but an echo, and then he was gone, and so was Shigaraki Tomura.
Shimura Tenko let out a breath. It was over.
Relief flooded him. With a jolt, he realized how similar it was to the emotion he’d felt when All Might’s death was announced. That weightless uncertainty back then wasn’t anger; it was relief. The feeling of a burden being lifted. Of a choice being made for him. He would never be the thing that killed All Might.
It was over.
He found the kids down one one the tunnels.
They were in cages. Cages. Like animals. Filthy, hair matted, faces red and blotchy with tears, but alive and whole. He wasn’t too late.
They flinched back as he approached, eyes wide with apprehension and fear.
“Are you a hero?” the youngest kid asked in a tiny voice.
“Fuck no.”
He decayed the locks and resigned himself to his fate when four sets of tiny arms wrapped around him. He lifted his hands away but otherwise stood still, half-dazed with disbelief. When tears began soaking through his shirt, he carefully pried himself away.
“Why are you crying?”
“We didn’t think any heroes were ever going to come!" cried the youngest boy. He was wearing a snot-covered All Might shirt. “It’s been weeks! ”
The kid probably didn’t even know All Might was dead.
“Did you kill the creepy old guy?” asked one of the other kids.
“What’s your name?” asked the oldest one. “I don’t recognize you. Are you really not a hero?”
He didn’t know what to do. His plan ended with Ujiko’s death. It didn’t account for needy kids. But he couldn’t leave them behind. He looked at the snotty kid’s All Might shirt. What was it he always said?
“It’s going to be alright,” he told them, forcing what he hoped was a smile onto his face. “I’m here.”
All Might’s grave was less...impressive than he expected. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but this modest gravestone wasn’t it. Tucked away on a sunny hill, All Might’s final resting place overlooked the city he’d defended his entire life. Until he hadn’t. Until his strength faded (had been taken from him), and he retired and let the next generation do the saving.
How had he been able to do that? Sit on the sidelines and trust that someone else would do the work?
Tenko wasn’t sure why he’d even come. Maybe because it still didn’t feel real, and the flowers, lingering smell of incense, and the stone monument carved with the name Yagi Toshinori were painfully, humanly real.
Sensei—All for One—never got a grave. Nobody mourned him. Nobody laid flowers at the site of his ashes. Eventually, the memory of him would fade, and there would be nothing left but the story.
The thought left him unbalanced. Would he be remembered as Shigaraki Tomura and nothing more? Just a scary bedtime story for disobedient kids? Would he have a grave? Would anyone mourn him?
He stared at the flowers heaped at the foot of All Might’s grave. Some part of him always saw All Might as immortal. A god. Unkillable by anything other than a monster. But All Might dying in his sleep was such a human thing. Would he be given the chance to discover what a peaceful death meant? Or was he still the monster under the bed, unkillable by anything other than a god?
“I wondered if you’d come.”
Tenko jumped at the voice and spun around. Deku stepped from behind a nearby tree, hands raised in a non-threatening gesture. He wasn’t in his hero costume, but that didn’t mean much.
“I’m not here to fight,” Deku said, which wasn’t reassuring.
Tenko’s eyes darted around, not trusting that Deku was alone. When he confirmed there was nobody else, he turned his gaze on Deku. “How did…?”
“How did I know you were alive? We always knew.”
Of course.
“I know what you’ve been doing,” the hero said. “He would be proud.”
A flash of anger, familiar, but not as comforting as it used to be. “I’m not doing it to make him proud.”
Deku smiled. “I know.”
“I’m not a hero.”
“No, you’re not,” Deku agreed. “But those kids are getting the treatment they need. They’ll recover and move on from what happened to them. You did that. Hero or not, you saved them.”
“And now what? Are you going to arrest me?”
Deku shook his head. “Not unless you’re planning on starting trouble. As far as anyone knows, Shigaraki Tomura is dead, and there’s nothing to connect you to whoever killed the doctor, right?”
Deku gave him a knowing look. Tenko nodded stiffly. Deku’s expression softened. “If you ever need anything—”
“If I did,” Tenko interrupted, “I wouldn’t ask you .”
Deku smiled again. “I’m glad you have people to support you,” he said sincerely.
Tenko gritted his teeth, annoyed by how effortlessly good Deku was.
“Did you notice?” Deku asked.
“What?” he snapped, bracing himself for more uncomfortable truths.
“The grave next to his. He specifically requested this location in his will.”
Tenko looked at the grave next to All Might’s. He hadn’t even noticed it with how loud All Might’s was.
Shimura Nana, the stone read. Mother, mentor, hero. His chest became uncomfortably tight. He hadn’t even known his grandmother had a grave.
“She would be proud too.”
Tenko said nothing, half too tired to argue, half wanting to believe it.
He left Deku without another word, the hero still standing next to his grandmother’s grave. There was work to do, and standing around feeling sorry for things he couldn’t change wasn’t going to fix what was broken. No matter what Deku believed, society would never accept him. But that wasn’t an excuse to do nothing, not when he was still alive and breathing.
Deku was right. He wasn’t a hero. And he wasn’t a villain. He wasn’t even a vigilante. He was just a person. That’s all anyone was. A person who made a choice, and who would continue to make choices. For too long, he let others decide who he was supposed to be. He let himself be convinced he had a grand purpose. A destiny.
He didn’t have a destiny. He had a choice.