The great escape
Yoichi breathed in dusty air as sand steamed from the ceiling. Occasionally the building would shake and a muffled explosion could be heard somewhere off in the distance. He sat listening trying to figure out where the exploins were, not that he would know where he was either.
He had been stuck in this vault for too damn long; he hadn't seen the sky in years. How many years he had absolutely no clue not after enough time. Time had this funny way of having night and day fold into one another and become indistinguishable after years of isolation all the more so when the isolated man was horribly sick coughing and wheezing to an empty audience for years and too weak to stay awake constantly, Youichi lymeted to himself.
Suddenly the ground shook and a deafening boom could be heard snapping him out of his thoughts. Yoichi paused. That sounded a lot closer than all the other ones. Before he could finish his train of thought another explosion went off but this one was nothing like the hundreds he had heard from afar before. This one was here, this one sent dust whirling all around,this one created a wave of force, and brought with it the sketching of metal and brought a taste of iron to the air. This one temporarily blinded and deafened him. When Yoichi could finally see again he noticed THIS one brought with it a beam of light from OUTSIDE the vault.
And in that beam of light stood two silhouettes shrouded in the dust still floating in the air. The closer of the two silently reached out his hand to Yoichi in the ringing silence he left in his wake. For the first time since Yoichi has been in this godforsaken vault he smiled as he accepted the hand before him that had opened his world up to new possibilities, to a true future.
As a child growing up in the early two thousands Yoichi had been a fan of superhero comics for as far back as he can remember. All his life he had looked up to the figureheads of the western superhero genre people like Tony Stark, Spiderman, Captain America, all the avengers, the X-men, and The Justice League. One could say Yoichi was a massive nerd and for as much as he would protest being called out on it he could’t for the life of his deny it.
At his very core Yoichi was a superhero nerd so when powers resembling mutations started popping up he couldn't help but have a bitter taste in his mouth that he never gained one. Over time however he had grown to accept that about himself. And just because he did not have one of these superpowers didn’t mean he was incapable of helping others now that some of the powered people had started becoming honest real life superheroes.
The main reason he never got too salty over his lack of power was his role models. As time passed Yoichi started to become even more enamored with the powerless heroes such as batman ironman and the like, if that was possible, not that he would ever admit such a thing to anyone but himself.
With only a singular exception, all of Yoichi's idols and role models, and anyone he looked up to really, would be a hero. So when the newfound group walks out into the corridors of the decommissioned bank and the dust settles allowing Yoichi to finally see his heroes he leaps at the opportunity to stare.
Yoichi will be honest, what he saw was far from what he had expected, far from what the buzzing excitement under his skin told him he would find awaiting him. These men did not wear the colored costumes or dramatic capes one would normally expect to see on a heroic visage instead they sported grim faces speckled with grime and dust and identical sets of dark green tactical vests and cargo pants. That however was where their similarities ended.
The taller of the men wore his grayish blue hair up in a suspiciously gravity defying ponytail, a dark ripped navy blue bandana keeping it out of his eyes. Mere inches beneath the cut of his T-shirt’s sleeves, from just above the elbow down the forearm and ending right on the wrist cords of linen wraps and hospital bandages were wrapped around his arms. He wore short black hunting boots and carried a black belt full of pouches like one would see on batman.
In contrast the other man had a short, spiky, fiery red head of hair. Below his vest which Yoichi was starting to suspect would be bulletproof, he wore a long sleeved and oddly enough collared dress shirt so dark gray it boarded on being black. His cargo pants were tucked into his combat boots that reached up to the mid shin. And finally most noticeably he wore a pair of large bulky steel gauntlets. He wore no belt but his vest had a few more pockets than his companion's vest.
These guys didn’t exactly fit the image Yoichi held of them not a minute earlier but the men didn't appear to look malicious or evil, just worn down and practical, for the most part that is. Yoichi would be an idiot to not question those gauntlets that red was wearing. For all their oddities these men could be perfectly moral people...right?
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As a hurricane of green lighting slowly disperses, blood red arcs of flame fade into the night sky. The embers that drift in the night sky would be as numerous as the stars above, if you could still see them that is. The final broadcasts from any official government had died out hours before.
Feeling an iron hot sensation of fire ridden air burning its way into his lungs, the pro hero Deku’s lets out primal scream that could never truly be recreated one of grief and sorrow and relief and fear and all the feeling he had been bottling up since the world had turned against him since he was four. And slowly screams give way to sobs as the hero starts to cry.
Tears slowly fall from his tear ducts and flow down his expressionless face. These tears are not tears of sadness or anger on behalf of everyone he has ever known, for those who have been lost over the years of crisis. These are not tears of hope or happiness for having finally killed the symbol of evil.
These are tears of pure concentrated despair. Lying at his feet are two corpses; the first is all for ones, the second is that of humanity. There lay the debris of the last city of humanity. However when izuku had started Ua it had only been a fake city used as a training ground as such it used to be called ground gamma. Once war broke out against all for one though civilians fled to ua for sanctuary.
When word broke out it was assigned a new name by its populace; the ark. Though in hindsight the Titanic would have been a more apt description of its fate. So as humanity's last standing spot crashed into ruins and burned around him izuku cried for the utter loss of hope and he supposed on a more personal note the loss of his dream. After all, what was a hero with no one left to save.
Izuku stands there until the fire dies and the smoke that fills the atmosphere starts to lessen. One for all passively fuels his body with energy replacing the need to sleep avoiding the nightmares and keeping izuku from starving in an inhospitable world He stands rooted to the spot as sand storms weathers the remnants of a once important civilization.
He stands there even as plants and weather and the world return to normal literally rooting him to the spot. And as the years pass by he goes from standing in a world without sunlight or rain or life to a field and meadows which give way to a steadily growing forest.
Izuku stands willingly as ash and rain and sand and all other manner of grime forms layer upon his skin turning the broken man into a statue. And izuku can't help but despise the world that had brought about a statue of the world's last hero not as a grand memorial for a great man but as a cruel trick of fate for a broken one. As the landscape and creatures begin to change before his very eyes, Izuku knows his time is coming to an end as one for all slows to a halt, finally having run out of steam. Izuku closes his eyes.
And as he begins to fade away he can't help it when his thoughts drift wondering about what ifs.
Deep inside one for all temporal golden electricity arks from the quirks core having been stored up when izuku had put everything he was , his entire existence on the line for a single girl to smile. So as izuku loses his grasp on the conscious world, so too does the energy for the man. As waves of golden lighting break away from the dying stockpiles, time begins to split