Chapter 96: ——~(89)~——

"If you gaze long into the abyss,

the abyss will gaze back at you"

-Friedrich Nietzsche

---

"Hey, you! Electric worker! Is everything all right?"

The booming intercom echoed by his ears, but he couldn't make out the words.

"...He's fine! Haha... Sorry about that, officer sir, my colleague here has a tendency to get sick at the worst of times-"

Another voice echoed next to him, more human, more grounding to his entrenched instincts than the static, crackly artificial voice, but it wasn't enough to let him escape his mind. Well, no, it wasn't just his mind, his soul anymore, was it? Beyond the familiar flicker of a pleasant sting, of buzzing warmth, there was something else. Black as the deepest abyss and sticky as tar, falling into him and warping the deepest parts of him, and he couldn't breathe-

He knew it, intellectually.

He knew that who, what he was trying to kill wasn't a human anymore, but more of a cesspit of evil, so vile it could make you puke. So horrifying it could make you shiver. Instinctively, upon seeing it, you felt a disquieting feeling of malformity, of cracks and jagged edges, so warped and twisted that it was not a human, but a weapon of pain and suffering, so evil to its very core that no words ever could hope to describe it.

Somehow, he knew that, and it still was worse.

'Such a reaction to my presence... Why, I'm flattered, Izuku. You've truly grown into a fine young man. I've met few in my long life that have been able to see exactly what my soul is. Who have been able to see what lies in its depths.'

His thoughts shattered; his awareness scrambled.

At this moment, only the barest of instinctual blimps of thought escaped into the turbulent storm, and the echos of instinct were telling in their bareness, in their ability to scratch the very core of exactly what All for One was.

'M-monster...'

A laugh reverberated in his head, so torturous and perverting that something may have ruptured.

Then, he felt it.

He felt a gaze focus on him.

'How does it feel when the Abyss gazes back at you, young man?'

He puked.

'Haha. Did you know, young man? While the first utterance of that saying has been lost to the distant past and was more of an esoteric warning than of anything else... The first time it was spoken in the present time wasn't figurative; it was very much literal. He was a troublesome fellow that came close to killing me for the first time in centuries, a wielder of a Soul quirk, and he said that to me moments before he died.'

He paused, the barest crescent of a smile fitting tightly on his face, mocking.

'You know, "If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back at you". But you're a well-read young man, aren't you, Izuku? I'm sure you knew already. You've grown up nicely, you know? So much hatred... Why, you remind me of myself when I was your age.'

He felt himself go pale as a corpse at the praise, but there was no escape; his voice echoed and echoed and echoed throughout his head, ringing like a jubilant child's laughter.

'I just knew you could do it, Izuku. There were hiccups and bumps along the road, but undoubtedly... You hold the greatest potential for evil in you. More than myself, even. Evil can be evil without a cause, but true depravity blossoms when you think you're righteous, don't you agree? Truly, there's nothing more poetic than a paradox.'

He was hyperventilating now.

'Nothing more beautiful than revenge.'

Deku felt himself twist and break as facts that he had tried to keep hidden, facts that tortured him more than anything else could ever hope to do, but just as they were inescapable, All for One was as well.

(tHeRe wAs nEVer aNY eSCapE)

'What makes it even better is that you're aware of the paradox, aren't you? You are aware of the meaning of every little thing that you do, aware of the consequences and the effects, but it doesn't stop you either way. You're everything I've ever dreamed of, Izuku...'

His eyes opened, wide and unseeing, as it whispered in his ear (in his soul).

'You're the Symbol of Evil.'

Suddenly, the abyss looked elsewhere.

{Izuku-}

{Izuku-}

He felt words and he felt himself being shaken, but the sensation was far away. Distant. Alien.

{Izuku-!}

(If his soul wasn't his anymore, if that could be perverted, could his body not be his anymore either? And the voice, it seemed familiar, but what was it exactly? He couldn't recall.)

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"..-Eku! Hey, come on! The play-sick-act-to-get-out-of-here is good and all, but not if I actually have to lug you out of here."

Words echoed in his ears, his real, physical ears, but his brain was too scrambled to make sense of it, too sore. He wanted to sleep and never wake up; comprehending speech was too much to ask of him. The phantom feeling of another was still buzzing beneath his skin, torturing his soul, the outsider-who-shall-never-be-named like a piece of dust in his eye; irritable and near impossible to get rid of.

But irritable was much better than before.

It was better than that gaze, so why couldn't he try?

The thought set a series of ripples across his mind, but it was too little, in the end. It sunk down in the lake of his self and never saw the light again. The thought of trying was too much right now, too small to make a difference. He was much too tired. Surely... It wouldn't be a problem if he took a short nap, would it? He had sunk into himself many times before, so why would it be a problem now?

Reality was too hard. It hurt. It stung. And wouldn't it be better to just go away? He was the Symbol of Evil (evil, evil, evil, evil, evil-), and if he got out, wouldn't he just hurt other people? Yes... It was best just to...

He felt something hit his cheek, in the real world, but it was still oh so very distant.

He should do something about it since his instincts were screaming at him, rather loudly, but reality was too scary.

He... Even if his real world was gone, was it that much of a problem?

He'd never have to be scared again, wouldn't he? That sounded much better than waking up...

{Izuku... You have to get up. Please.}

A lady's pretty voice then appeared, just as he was about to go to sleep too.

He felt a flash of irritation at the lady, but...

{You have to wake up, Izuku Midoriya.}

Her voice really was pretty.

Like... Like the pitter-patter of the rain after a lightning strike, soft yet sharp.

It felt nice. Comfortable. Familiar.

It felt right.

Suddenly, the irritation he hadn't even realized still existed vanished and he felt... mostly alright. He would never be perfectly aligned again after this, but some part of him knew that he had never been in the first place. The trickles of falseness and wrongness were so familiar that they might as well have been right. It wasn't perfect, but he was used to imperfection. Even the gaze that lingered in his soul, the memory of it, the perversion of it, that too was smoothed over with the ease of familiarity.

He had merely gained a few more cracks, after all.

And a few of the cracks he already had were filled in with something different.

But, really, he was mostly there and that...

That had always been enough, so he supposed he didn't have the right to go to sleep now either.

---

Black eyes of darkest night, of space and time combusting into a hole lacking so much that it greedily drew in everything else to make it whole again—with specks of gold and red like stars that drizzled down in an inhumane spiral—opened.

And with it, Midoriya Izuku was awake.

 

AN: So, the main reason that I bothered to make AFO talk to Izuku is pretty obvious. I just wanted that one-liner, hehe.

"You're the Symbol of Evil."

Ah, that sends shivers down my spine, ngl.

Other than that, this makes all the future events kinda clack into place—it would make sense regardless, but this just makes it so much better. I kinda hinted at this in the chapter itself, but the reason he is talking with Deku without setting off any of the alarms and is even able to hold him captive in a one-sided link Gray needs to spend a long time to get Deku out of lies in souls.

Now, now, before you think I'm getting too crazy, hear me out. So, MHA has basically 21st-century (perhaps better) technology on its side, even with the Dark Ages happening, right? How have they not figured out quirks yet, then? We're doing some pretty impressive stuff with genetics right now. Thus, it must be something deeper that we don't even know if it exists or not...

THAT'S RIGHT, SOUL QUIRKIES.

Ahem. Basically, quirks come from a mutation in the soul (that doctor at the start of the show is a quack) that showed up for who knows what reason. That's not important. The key thing is that AFO's essentially been collecting soul fragments throughout his life (hence why Nomu's are pretty messed up, plus AFO too, cough) and through the spirit of research and compare & contrast, he figured out soul stuff.

When he felt the link hovering on his senses, he used his experience with the soul that can't be limited by quirk resistant materials, he hopped on and took it over. Although because he never got a soul quirk (he says he killed the person, but they suicided before he could take it to prevent the birth of an even more crazy monster) he can't do much more than what's shown here.

And that's it. Thanks for reading through the extra-long AN note~

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