Chapter Text
Tartarus.
A name borrowed from Greek mythology. A name that inspired dread in the minds of criminals throughout Japan. A name known worldwide, at least in passing. The name of one of the most secure prisons in the world. Japan’s premier incarceration facility.
Deep beneath the surface of the sea, under steel and water and concrete, a blind man’s grin widened ever-so-slightly.
Tartarus. All for One’s current place of residence.
His plan was proceeding without any unexpected turns whatsoever. While it might have been preferable to avoid incarceration, it was by no means catastrophic. Garaki already had the original All for One quirk, and the dominoes were set to fall with Tomura. The only thing All for One needed to do was wait, and Tartarus couldn’t keep time from passing.
They couldn’t even try to kill him, either. His agents in the government were kicking up as much fuss as they could about potential self-destruct quirks he might hold, pushing for a delay to his execution. And even then, his prodigious durability suite was potent enough to handle most anything they tried to throw at him. Especially since he was focusing solely on defense. Turtle, for example, was a quirk that increased the user’s durability proportionally to how little they were moving. It wasn’t much use in battles, but in a place like Tartarus, where he was almost completely still?
It made him nigh-invulnerable.
His grin widened a bit more. All he had to do was wait, and his plan would ensure he ascended into veritable godhood. With Tomura’s body, he would usher in a new age, shaped by his own desires. His reign would be eternal.
He could see the light at the end of the tunnel. In just a few months, everything he’d spent decades setting up would be brought to fruition. He would have his new body, and would finally take back One for All. After that, he’d consolidate his power and take New Order, then the rest of the world. He would be an unstoppable god.
In a few months, that was.
He simply needed to wait until Tomura’s body was ready. And, his vast intellect having foreseen the possibility of capture, he’d made sure to bring along a few quirks to pass the time in addition to the combat loadout he’d been cultivating to use against the blond moron. Even in his diminished state, he’d had enough capacity in his ruined body for them.
The only question was which one to use first. It couldn’t be anything external, as the guards and cameras would see, which eliminated a handful of options, but he had brought enough to give him a wide range of possibilities. He could tap into the internet and look for new and interesting quirks, or…
He was feeling nostalgic for the comics of his youth. So instead of Technopath, he reached for a quirk he’d never actually used before. Taken from a distant relative of Sir Nighteye, Storyteller was a precognitive quirk that showed the user the “story” they were taking part in. It took several years to recharge, but he was given to understand that it was amazingly comprehensive. The previous owner had been instrumental in preventing a coup that All for One had tried to set off, and had avoided all of his assassination attempts until he’d gotten involved personally.
From his interrogation of the woman, All for One had learned that the quirk would center in on the “protagonist” of whatever overarching plotline the user was a part of, and would follow that person in the style of a story to the end.
And… he was curious. What would his victory look like? He’d spent so long in a broken, ruined body that trying to imagine being healthy was near to impossible, beyond the abstract. This quirk would show him. It would give him a solid goal to work towards, and would prove beyond all doubt that his plans would succeed.
All for One activated the quirk.
“People are not born equal.”
Was that… the Ninth? As a child? Well, the boy certainly fit the traditional image of a protagonist. That would make All for One the ultimate villain, wouldn’t it? The thought brought a small measure of happiness to his mind.
But then the quirk continued, and started getting faster.
“Quirkless.”
Yes, yes, he knew that already.
“Swan dive…”
Oh? Now that was interesting. Something he could use the next time the boy tried to fight him. Breaking him down into a shivering wreck would be enjoyable.
“No hope for him.”
So the Ninth had visited Garaki as a child. Interesting. That meant that there was a sample somewhere in Garaki’s extensive records. He’d have to look into that.
But then the quirk got faster.
“Medium-sized body— I am here— Without a quirk— Body moved before I— My quirk is yours to inherit!”
All for One settled himself in to watch the events unfold as they came rushing into his mind.
“Eat this!”
The quirk was completely autonomous, he realized. Once he started it, he couldn’t stop until the end.
No matter. He’d intended to watch the whole thing anyway.
“UA…”
All for One could see so many flaws in the school’s system. How had they churned out so many high-ranking heroes? It was beyond him.
“It won’t kill him if he dodges!”
Oh. Oh, that was an absolutely lovely psychological wound he’d be able to use to tear the Ninth apart.
“USJ— Kill the Symbol of Peace— I am here—”
The quirk accelerated. The Sports Festival was shown next, with All for One sneering at the audacity of UA to broadcast the abilities and weaknesses of all their hero students. It had led him to over a dozen quirks he would have missed otherwise, and was a downright stupid maneuver on their parts. He was thankful for it, but he refused to believe that Nedzu had missed such a glaring weakness. There was something else afoot. Perhaps the HPSC was meddling again.
“Gran Torino.”
Stain. It was good that Tomura had eventually gotten his convictions solid. It would make All for One’s eventual takeover much better.
UA’s final exam was up next. Nothing interesting. But the summer camp was where things had really kicked off. It was a shame that they hadn’t been able to recruit the Explosion boy, but with the knowledge gained from the Storyteller quirk, All for One would have several more opportunities and avenues to explore, and the brat was primarily a plan to draw out the heroes anyways.
The quirk accelerated, and it was getting to the point that All for One was having to dedicate most of his mind to simply processing the information instead of reacting to it. It was no real setback, he’d simply go over it all after the quirk was done.
He settled in his chair and let the quirk flow.
“It’s already been destroyed.”
No.
“This is the tale of how we’ll keep reaching out to help for all time.”
No, no, no.
For the first time in decades, the grin fell from All for One’s face without a battle to distract him. His breathing was ragged, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.
NO, this was all WRONG! HE WAS THE DEMON LORD! HE WAS SUPPOSED TO WIN!
HE ALWAYS WON!
He gritted his teeth and took a deep breath of the oxygen-rich air, ignoring the searing pain in his lungs and throat.
What had gone wrong? His plans were supposed to be perfect. Why was the future-him making such shortsighted decisions? How had the heroes managed to counter him? How had they managed to eke out a victory?
(He had just seen how, hadn’t he.)
…
All for One felt a chill as a sudden thought came to mind.
Was the future immutable?
Were the events he’d seen set in stone? Was he somehow fated to lose to LITERAL CHILDREN?
He took another deep breath, his hands balling into fists in his straitjacket.
No.
No, that was impossible. The “him” in the quirk’s visions wasn’t acting on the information he now knew. The quirk must have shown him what would have happened had he never activated the quirk.
The future could be changed. That was good.
All for One let out a sigh of relief. The future could be changed. And that meant…
He could prevent his defeat from ever happening.
But that meant he needed to escape. Because the catalyst of his downward spiral, at least from what he could tell at a glance, was his transfer into Tomura’s body. The plan with Tomura needed to be scrapped in its entirety. All for One could regain his health in a different way.
Overhaul, perhaps. He’d always known about the quirk, but he’d never had sufficient leverage to force the man to heal him, and didn’t have the time to devote years (even with his accelerated learning and memory) to learning every intricacy of the human body in order to manually heal himself after taking it. Maybe if he gave the quirk to Garaki?
No, actually—Rewind. Yes, Rewind would do nicely. If he rescued her from Overhaul, it would build a personal connection that would endear him to her, and he could use that connection to manipulate her into rewinding him to his prime. He already knew that it was possible to rewind the body but not his stored quirks, as seen when the future-him had used the Rewind derived from the bullet. And the Permeation boy’s case proved the inverse was also possible.
All for One took a moment to marvel at the capability of the quirk that rewound time. He wanted it. No matter how much training he would have to do. But could it be activated on the user themselves? It was unclear. So, better to wait until the girl had healed him, then take it.
Still, he needed to escape to do anything. And escape from Tartarus was a daunting task, to say the least. It would be difficult even for him to go up against all the varied defenses possessed by the prison.
Certainly, Tartarus wasn’t the outright best. There were more secure prisons elsewhere in the world. But all of them were facilities devoted to individuals. Built for those miniscule few who could cause devastation beyond compare if left free—a fate All for One had avoided only through his high-ranking agents. Tartarus was a general-purpose prison, though that didn’t diminish its own security at all.
All for One’s breakout would be even further complicated by the fact that he only had his combat loadout and a few quirks for passing the time. If he had the full breadth of his vast stockpile available to him, he would simply be able to walk out without a care in the world. Unfortunately, the damage done by the muscleheaded troglodyte was far-reaching and severe. It limited his quirk’s capacity, limited what quirks he could use, and left him in constant pain.
Even more irritating was the fact that he’d have to escape secretly, if he wanted any modicum of peace and quiet with which to make new plans. He was far too public of a figure as it stood. For all intents and purposes it had to appear as though he had never left his cell.
No matter. He was All for One. He would escape anyway. It would simply take a bit more of a delicate touch.
If he was to escape without being detected, he would need to avoid any damage to the building, avoid being caught on cameras, and fabricate evidence that he was still present in the cell. Double would work for the last issue, but All for One didn’t possess Double at the moment, and Bubaigawara Jin was too far away for him to use Warping on him.
Kurogiri, however, had no range limits. And regardless of the fact that he was compromised, Kurogiri was a nomu, designed to receive orders from All for One’s Radio Waves quirk. Moreover, the Erasure brat wasn’t present to subvert All for One’s nomu yet, so Kurogiri’s flaws wouldn’t come into play.
The rest of the plan very quickly fell into place. After letting off an EMP, he’d only have around twenty seconds before the camera systems came back on, but that was plenty of time. His reflexes and perceptions needed to be leagues above anything approaching average to even have a chance of keeping up with One for All’s godlike speed and power. The guns wouldn’t have the time needed to activate.
The primary issue with his plan, and likely the reason he hadn't employed it in the future he’d seen, was that the speed quirks he would need to use were going to place a not insignificant strain on his already injured body. He would need to keep the ventilator with him — at least until he got to any of his hideouts, all of which were stocked with the equipment he needed. But that would leave evidence of his escape. How to go about… Ah. Right.
Double.
He would be leaving a clone of himself behind to prevent suspicions, but Double wasn’t limited to copying people. No, it could copy anything. The quirk could only make two things at a time, but he only needed the ventilator temporarily. He would leave the real equipment untouched in his cell, and use the copied one for the short time it would take to travel to his nearest hideout and set himself up. Simple and easy.
And as soon as he had a portable mask again? Well, he would be off to rescue little Eri from the big, bad yakuza. He’d seen that she wouldn’t have been rescued until the Work Studies, which were still a while off. After the provisional license exam, in fact. That would give him ample time to get to the girl. And…
Yes, why not Overhaul as well? All for One was going to need to be covert. Overhaul would take some time to master, but it was a surgical quirk with immense potential. Decay was a modified copy of it, after all. If the reverse-engineered copy was any indication, Overhaul might eventually be able to spread through separate objects, and be activated by any part of the body rather than just the hands. The effort it would take to get the quirk to that point was likely going to be significant, but the future he’d seen had taught him a valuable lesson.
This time, he would win. He was immortal, or at least was going to be. He would have all the time in the world to master any quirk he wanted, and there was no guarantee that a matter-manipulation quirk as powerful as Overhaul might ever appear again. Better to take it now and have it, rather than risking it be lost forever.
His new philosophy applied to quite a few quirks he’d rejected in the past on the grounds of them being too complicated. He would have to make a trip to collect them all once his body was stable enough to hold them.
Ah, but he was getting sidetracked. Back to the more immediate options: the Shie Hassaikai. Though if he was being honest with himself, they wouldn’t be putting up much of a fight. He was All for One. Even their quirks were mostly useless to him. The only interesting ones were Confession and Sloshed. Perhaps some of the others could be used by nomu, but they were redundant and would serve no purpose other than to take up space in All for One’s quirk if he took them for himself.
Confession was interesting in that it forced the target to respond. His own lie-detection arsenal was more than capable of sussing out untruths, but it was a more passive option. And that wasn’t even getting into the potential for using vocally-activated quirks. Sloshed, on the other hand, had potential as it could disorient anyone within a certain range. Reducing the threat level of any attacker was a valuable tool for All for One to have in his possession.
Crystallize and Energy Suck possibly retained potential as quirks for some of the nomu, but they would offer very little to All for One personally. And the rest? Useless, save for maybe Food. If and only if it could synergize with mouths he created with other quirks would it have any worth. Otherwise, it was a mere gimmick. He would steal it to confirm or deny his suspicions, but he wouldn’t keep it if the answer turned out to be no.
Returning to the wider view of things, there was quite a lot All for One would have to do once he escaped and rescued Eri. He’d been preparing for the plan with Tomura becoming his new self for years, and now that the entire plan was unsalvageable, he would need to start fixing things. Most of his networks had been made autonomous, as he’d expected a period of acclimation, which would make getting everything operating smoothly at one hundred percent efficiency a bit of a hassle.
More pressingly, he’d also need to come up with a new plan to regain his health. And beyond that, to shed the constrictions and limitations his first-generation body placed on him. Garaki’s improvements could only do so much. They’d determined that modifying a late-generation body would make All for One’s ascension to a singularity possible, which was why he’d begun cultivating potential candidates, but he was now determined to find a different path. He would not risk the vestige of the original person trying to subvert him. Tomura was likely a special case, given just how much All for One had strengthened his willpower and hatred, but he wasn’t going to risk it.
But now that that avenue had been shown to be… less perfect than they’d expected, how was he going to take his rightful place as the undisputed ruler of the world?
Restoring his original body was possible, but it would be a mere consolation prize. Rewind could bring him back to his prime, but he would still be limited by the inefficiencies and flaws in his first-generation body. No, he either needed to refine Garaki’s modification process to be capable of improving his own body to the degree necessary, or he still needed to take over someone else’s. And…
All for One shifted slightly in the uncomfortable stone chair, listening to the soft whirrs of the turrets as they tracked their targets: his heart and head.
And there was also the fact that One for All would rebel against him when he took it. Even a single vestige, New Order, was shown to be capable of putting up a serious fight against him. One for All had seven fully-formed vestiges that would all need to be suppressed or otherwise incapacitated for All for One to finally retake what was rightfully his: the Power Stockpiling quirk and his brother. He’d been counting on Tomura’s hatred being enough to overcome the lingering wills, but even if it wasn’t a moot point by now he’d learned that Tomura’s hatred wasn’t enough.
Furthermore, he was realistic enough to admit—as much as the admission pained him—that his own will alone would not be enough. Against any of the One for All vestiges individually, he would of course win. Even against two or three at once. But collectively, they were a force to be reckoned with.
Though, he suddenly realized, that was contingent on him even reaching the Ninth to steal One for All in the first place. The brat was quick and clever, and even if he could only use a fraction of One for All’s full power, that still placed him above most heroes out there.
One for All was simply that powerful.
And even though All Might was renowned for his strength, the real killer was the speed. One for All let the user move at velocities vastly exceeding the speed of sound, with the reaction times to match. All Might was famed for solving most cases in an “instant,” after all. It was the whole reason All for One had put so much work into Overclock and Number Six.
Unfortunately, that particular quirk was dependent on the oxygenation of the brain, and therefore was now utterly unusable by him in his injured state. Nevertheless, Number Six had demonstrated the potential of the quirk quite nicely. All for One was making do with other, more limited perception boosters and acceleration quirks, but Overclock could have meant the difference between defeat and victory in his calamitous battle against the Eighth.
Ah, but he was getting distracted by hypotheticals again.
His primary concern was ensuring he survived in the short term. After all, he would be placing a massive strain on his injured body by using the speed quirks necessary, almost to the level of another no-holds-barred fight with All Might. If he wasn’t careful, he could end up overloading himself, leaving himself incapacitated and the guards alerted.
Twenty seconds. He needed to make his entire escape in twenty seconds or less. Any longer and the redundancies in Tartarus’s systems would restart the surveillance and security systems. Twenty seconds to get Kurogiri and Twice to warp to him, to steal Double, create a clone of himself and the ventilator, and leave.
But it wouldn’t end there. The backlash to his body meant that his destination by necessity was going to be one of his hideouts with advanced medical facilities. He had several, scattered around the country, and even more outside of Japan, but in this case it was likely better to go with an option closer to home. If there were to be any unforeseen complications, or if the backlash proved to be greater than he anticipated, then it would be beneficial to be in a location with competent allies who could help.
And neither Kurogiri nor Bubaigawara Jin were medical professionals.
Ergo, All for One’s destination would be the secret facility under Jakku General Hospital. And if he timed his breakout to occur at night, the Doctor was almost guaranteed to be there.
Yes, Jakku was the best option. It was the Doctor’s pride and joy, his homebase, and the location of the largest quirk archive in existence. All for One and Garaki had made a few others for redundancy, but the one under Jakku was as near to comprehensive as was possible. All for One had felt a pang of dismay when Storyteller had shown him Tomura disintegrating the whole thing without a care in the world.
Yet more evidence as to why the brat wasn’t suitable. His immaturity had been dismissed as a non-factor, seeing as All for One and the Doctor had expected the former’s vestige to completely override Tomura’s mind, but it seemed their predictions were incorrect.
And again, it was a moot point. Tomura would never be getting All for One’s quirk.
Once at Jakku, All for One would take some time to recuperate from the backlash of the speed quirks, then head out to rescue Eri. After that, he’d have to lay low while building up Eri’s trust and faith in him.
Hmm…
From what he’d seen, the girl already admired heroes, having seen them on the television. And she had a far more intimate understanding of what villains were, due to her torture at the hands of Overhaul. If All for One wanted the girl to trust him at all, he would have to distance himself from her previous captor.
That was doable. He could play the law-abiding citizen while slowly chipping away at Eri’s faith in heroes. In fact, a more sedate, domestic life would help hide him, right in plain sight. When one thought of the Symbol of Evil, one thought of secret lairs, dark rooms in shady places, and more in that vein. Who would suspect the perfectly ordinary man raising a child? He’d obviously need to hide his injuries somehow, but there were numerous transformation or illusion quirks he could use to do so. And from there, he’d regain his strength, continue his projects, and eventually reach his destiny.
And unlike the version of the future he’d seen, this time he would win.