[The Fox and the Hare] Chapter 49 - Final Battle (I) (Patreon)

A black sedan with tinted windows was parked in front of a tall building. Inside the car, there were three men: a thin but handsome middle-aged man with spiky blonde hair and bright blue eyes, and two young men sporting strong, muscular physiques, one with green hair and the other with blonde hair and a pair of fox ears on his head. 

“Izuku, wrap it up. We’ll start in 2 minutes,” Naruto said as he double-checked his equipment: the earmuffs protecting his sensitive hearing, a gas mask, a kunai pouch, ninja wire, and smoke grenades. 

The boy in question was currently having a video call with his girlfriend. 

“Was that Naruto-san?” 

The asymmetrical short purple hair, the red marks under her eyes, and the long earlobes left no doubt about her identity. Other than the fact that she had lost some of her baby fat and that her face became a bit sharper, Kyoka Jiro appeared to have not changed all that much. 

“Yes… I have to go. We are about to start.”

“Promise me to be careful,” she said, her voice tinged with worry. 

“I will. It’s a promise.”

“Anything could happen, so I want to tell you now lest I don’t get the chance after… I love you, Izuku.”

The green-haired teen’s face flushed at her confession. 

“Come on, Kyoka-chan, don’t raise any flags now!”

Although they had been a couple for quite some time, it was the first time Kyoka told him that she loved him. 

“But don’t worry. Naruto is with me. And his dad will teleport with the rest of the heroes the very moment All For One makes his appearance. We will win. So just wait for me, okay?”

“Okay,” she said in a small voice. 

“Kyoka?”

“Yes?”

“I-, I…”

He wanted to say that he loved her too, but he couldn’t muster the courage to voice out his feelings. 

“I will see you later.”

“Yes… see you later.”

And with that, their video call came to an end. 

“Maaan, you’re so awkward! I got second-hand embarrassment just listening to you,” Naruto snickered. 

“Oh, shut it!"

“K-Kyoka-c-chan. I-I l-l-ove you,” Naruto said in a high-pitched voice and with an exaggerated stutter. 

“Fuck you! I didn’t talk like that!” Izuku burst into annoyance, but his flushed face didn’t help his case. 

Naruto’s teasing, however, helped a great deal in easing Izuku’s inner anxiety. 

“We’re about to have a life-and-death battle with All For One. How are you still in the mood to joke around?”

He shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t his first, second, or third rodeo. He lost count of how many times he had been in a life-and-death situation in his past life. His current life had not been uneventful either, having already gone through two perilous moments due to AFO and his Nomu creature.

“We will win,” he said with conviction. “Between the two of us, there’s nobody in this world we can’t defeat.”

Minato also turned to give the boys one last look. 

“Naruto, Izuku. Good luck.”

He wasn’t one to say many words, but Naruto knew how much his father cared about him. 

With that, the two boys came out of the car, and Minato drove away. 

Naruto smirked at Izuku confidently. 

“Now let’s go get this shit done,” he said, raising his hand for a fist bump. 

In spite of the worries plaguing his mind, Izuku found himself grinning too at Naruto’s words.

The two boys bumped their fists together before heading straight to the wide doors of Detnerat’s HQ. 

⁂

Rikiya Yotsubashi, also known to the rest of the Liberation Army as Re-Destro, smiled as he sipped from a mug of coffee while looking at the beautiful scenery outside through the large window of his office. 

‘Allying myself with All For One has been the best decision of my life.’

In the beginning, his first intention had been to formulate a plan to eliminate AFO and the rest of his organization, but, luckily, he had decided against going down that route before it was too late. Having witnessed All For One’s power firsthand, he knew things wouldn’t have ended well for him. 

‘Things couldn’t have been any better than the present.’

All Might was dead, the Hero Public Safety Commission had been destroyed, most of the Pro Heroes in Japan were either dead or went into hiding, and Re-Destro’s subordinates were controlling the government. 

The cherry on top of the cake was that his company’s profits had increased more than 1000% over the past year. Originally, Detnerat was a company that specialised in producing customized items and goods for people with mutant-type quirks who could not easily find what they needed among the mass-produced articles used by most people. However, ever since AFO and his people took over the government, Detnerat expanded and covered all the holes left in the market by the companies that went bankrupt with the fall of the Hero System. Now, Re-Destro owned a large building in Marunouchi, the most sought-after financial district of Tokyo. He could even see the Imperial Palace and its gardens from his office. 

The Liberation Army has won. He, together with his allies, had made Destro’s ideals a reality. There were no more rules that infringed upon people’s rights to be themselves and use their quirks. They have attained their long-sought-after freedom. 

Nevertheless, even after such a series of successful endeavours, Re-Destro’s mind was still not at ease. He could not find peace. 

‘Why have Uzumaki Naruto and Vanguard returned to Japan?’

He couldn’t quite understand their thought process. 

‘What’s the point of fighting crime and trying to arrest anyone? Especially now, when they aren’t being paid by the HPSC anymore and when the very people they are protecting hate them…’’

Villains weren’t getting prosecuted anymore, and the population of Japan had turned against the heroes completely after the footage of Danzo’s mad speech about taking over the world was made public. 

‘Why did they come back after all this time? What are they after? …I don’t like this.’

It didn’t sit right with him. He could feel his stress level building up. 

As the saying goes, speak of the devil, and he shall appear. Just as those thoughts passed through his mind, a powerful tremor shook the entire building. 

‘Is it an earthquake?’

Japanese people were no strangers to earthquakes. However, a second short tremor shook the entire building again, and the sound of an alarm suddenly blaring convinced him that that was no mere earthquake. 

“Re-Destro, sir, we have intruders!” his secretary also came into the office hurriedly and shouted in a panicky voice. 

⁂

“Are you punks out of your goddamn minds?! Do you have any idea who the hell you’re messing with right now?” one of the security agents shouted as he took cover behind the wall and activated his quirk, turning the fingers of his right hand into the barrels of guns and firing a hail of bullets. 

A spear-tipped golden chain suddenly pierced through the wall like a hot knife through butter, and the security agent let out a hoarse scream as he got stabbed in the shoulder too. 

“Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!” he shouted when Naruto stepped out from behind the corner. 

The indifferent look in the blonde's eyes and the four golden chains flailing at his back menacingly made the bodyguard unknowingly hold his breath from fear. 

“Piss off. Get as far from this place as possible if you want to live.”

When the man didn’t move, Naruto picked him by an ankle with his chains and threw him away, straight through the building’s front windows.

Izuku was no less swift and decisive in dealing with the opposition either. The two of them were not killing anyone, and they refrained from attacking any of the regular employees of the company, letting them run away unscathed. However, they weren’t gentle with those who tried to stop their advance. 

In truth, both Naruto and Izuku could fly so if their aim had been to merely assassinate Re-Destro, they could have just flown to the top floor and either Izuku or Kurama could have obliterated the whole upper part of the building without even needing to go inside. 

But the two of them didn't rush. They went one floor at a time, giving everyone the chance to evacuate in order to prepare the battlefield for when All For One showed up. Simultaneously, they were also giving Re-Destro plenty of time to call for AFO and request assistance. 

Soon, they arrived on the top floor of the building, and they stopped in front of the large door leading to Re-Destro’s office. 

“Why is it so quiet?” Izuku asked. 

Re-Destro was one of the leaders of the Liberation Army, so he had expected the entrance to his office to be packed with villains and bodyguards.

“Maybe he has escaped already?”

“No,” Naruto said. “He’s inside the office. I can hear the sound of his breathing. I can even hear his heartbeat. Very high heart rate, by the way; the dude is probably shitting bricks right now.”

Izuku snorted but didn’t entertain his banter. 

One of Naruto’s six fox tails became covered by a crimson-red, liquid-like substance and turned into a gigantic size before smashing into the wall and blasting it apart.

As the two of them stepped through the destroyed wall, they were faced with a completely different person than they had expected. 

Instead of the slim, big-nosed CEO wearing a designer business suit, what they saw was a dark brown-skinned creature, a hulking monstrosity over 3 meters tall, packed with grotesque muscles. 

“Stress Output Burden!” the monstrous Re-Destro yelled and threw the sphere of dark purple energy in his hand at Naruto and Izuku. 

A massive shockwave burst forth, shattering the windows and blowing up the entire building’s rooftop. 

But Re-Destro’s eyes widened when he saw that Naruto and Izuku were virtually unharmed, covered by a dome of golden chains. 

Once Naruto retrieved his chains, Izuku cocked his fist back and shouted:

“Detroid Smash!”

Despite the immense power and durability that Re-Destro boasted while his Stress quirk was cranked up to 100%, the mere pressure coming from Izuku’s Smash made him vomit blood as he was blown off like a cannonball, crashing into the Imperial Gardens several hundred meters away. 

Not even five seconds later, Naruto crash-landed next to him, his hand already turning into vicious claws, ready to kill him on the spot. 

At the very last moment, however, a dirty black ooze burst from Re-Destro’s mouth, and a rancid smell like that of a sewer filled the air. 

Naruto backflipped away cautiously, quickly putting a distance of 15 meters between him and Re-Destro’s ooze-engulfed body. 

In the meantime, Izuku also arrived at the Imperial Gardens with his Float quirk and watched the mass of ooze with a tense look on his face. 

The black ooze had yet to fully disperse when the silhouette of a tall and muscular man appeared, and a deep voice was heard: 

“Air Cannon!”

Naruto and Izuku scattered in opposite directions, escaping the blast radius of the pressurized wind attack. However, at the same time, they also pressed the button of a special device, triggering the signal for the rest of the Pro Heroes to come. 

Not even fifteen seconds later, 10 Pro Heroes appeared behind All For One, around 20 meters away from him. 

In less than 30 seconds, another two teams of roughly 10 members each were teleported over. 

For someone at their level, 30 seconds was a very long time, but All For One merely stood and watched, seemingly unbothered by the fact that he had suddenly found himself surrounded by more than two dozen Pro Heroes. 

“My, my, it looks like I got baited and trapped,” All For One said, chuckling lightly. “I am plenty strong myself, but even I’d be hard pressed to take on so many top-tier heroes at once, especially when All Might’s successor is among them too.”

AFO did not have eyes but he turned his head to ‘look’ at Izuku as if he could see him perfectly. 

“So how about we level the playing field a bit before we start?”

His silhouette seemed to melt for a moment, and then, to everyone’s shock, three other AFOs came out, for a total of four. All For One had made 3 clones of himself. 

“Eraserhead!” Hawks shouted. 

“You don’t have to tell me!” Aizawa yelled back, and his shoulder-length hair suddenly stood up as he activated his Erasure quirk. 

As his clones collapsed in a puddle of mud and he felt his connection to his other quirks get severed, for the first time since he made his appearance, All For One lost his air of superiority. 

“Now!” Ectoplasm yelled, and the Pro Heroes all launched their attacks at AFO. 

However, before any of their attacks got to reach AFO, Naruto, Izuku, Hawks, and Mirko all broke the sound barrier as they threw themselves at All For One. 

AFO just narrowly managed to avoid Naruto’s claw attack, but that left him open, and Hawks stabbed his red feather sword into his back. Alas, to Hawk’s shock, despite AFO’s quirks being cancelled, his body itself was so tough that his sword couldn’t pierce more than 5 centimetres into his muscles. 

A roundhouse slicing kick from Mirko opened a mortal gash into AFO’s carotid artery, and blood splashed out like a geyser from his neck. Izuku was the last to arrive, though only a split second later than the first three, and smashed a powerful axe kick into AFO’s head from above:

“Manchester Smash!”

As soon as the four of them threw their attacks, they also vanished from the spot, just in time for the other Pro Heroes’ attacks to land. 

Fire, sand, water, electricity, blood, energy attacks, physical attacks, bullets, and even laser blasts all poured down on AFO like a rain from hell, leaving him unable to even make an attempt to escape, bombarding him mercilessly. 

“Did we get him?” Vlad King asked. The smoke, mist, and dust that had filled the entire area was making it impossible for them to see the results of their handiwork. 

As the heroes seemed to be stuck in a metaphorical limbo, waiting tensely, a sudden gunshot shattered the momentary silence that had been instilled. 

“Eraserhead!” Mirko shouted.

The ground underneath her feet crumbled like quicksand as she jumped as hard as she could, launching herself at Eraserhead. 

Unfortunately, even with her great speed, she had been just an instant too late. 

A sniper rifle bullet nailed Eraserhead straight in the forehead, blowing his skull like a watermelon. 

Dread and horror installed on everyone’s faces when they realized the gravity of what had just transpired. 

Eraserhead had been a pivotal part of their plan. He had been the most important piece that would have allowed them to defeat All For One. His death spelt not only the failure of their plan but also their doom as well. 

Another gunshot was heard, and Mirko’s eyes widened in terror when her quirk warned of the shooter’s next target. 

“NARUTO!”

Fortunately, unlike Eraserhead, Naruto’s superhuman instincts and reflexes allowed him to just barely dodge the fatal bullet: it was a bullet that went past his head and left a football-sized hole into the trunk of a tree behind him.

Three seconds after Aizawa’s death, yet another gunshot rang, also aimed at Naruto again. 

"Smokescreen!" shouted Izuku in an attempt to block the sniper's line of sight, to make it impossible for them to aim.

But while Naruto surrounded himself with his Adamantine Sealing Chains, to make matters even worse for everyone else, the smoke and dust were suddenly dispersed as a chorus of shouts came from the centre:

“Air Cannon!”

Even as everyone aside from Naruto and Izuku got blasted away, another gunshot rang, and one more hero fell down lifelessly with a large, gaping hole left in their chest.

“Dad! Come and take everyone away! Mission failed!” Naruto shouted into his earpiece before yelling at Mirko: “Rumi, leave All For One to Izuku and I. Go for the sniper!”

Two years ago, ‘the survival instinct of a prey’ coming from her Rabbit Quirk evolved into an almost supernatural ability to sense danger. Nowadays, she could tell even if someone as much as looked at her. It was an ability that almost bordered the realm of precognition. 

“You were the ones who lured me out here, were you not?” All For One said with a laugh as he stepped out of the crater with three clones at his side. “So why are you running now? Come, heroes. Face me in a battle. Like in the fairy tales of old, come face the symbol of evil! Come face the demon king!”

A shockwave deafened some of the nearby heroes as Mirko burst at her fastest speed into the direction from which she could sense danger, pursuing the sniper who had been killing them from afar. 

Simultaneously, the ground under Izuku’s feet shattered and collapsed into countless symmetrical cubes as he threw himself at All For One with a scream:

“One For All, Fa Jin! Nebraska Smash!”

However, All For One and his three Clones raised their hands and spoke in a chorus:

“Flashfire Fist: Jet Burn!”

Four blasts of blue fire burst forth from the four AFO’s hands with such intensity that the Fa Jin-empowered tornado generated by Izuku’s Nebraska Smash instantly vanished. 

Izuku’s eyes widened in disbelief as he crossed his hands in front of his face in a last-moment desperate attempt to protect himself. 

A gigantic wall of ice suddenly burst from the ground in front of Izuku, and another wall of sand rose behind it too, courtesy of Todoroki and Gaara, who were both just barely standing on their feet after All For One’s group Air Cannon attack caught them in full. 

Gaara was bleeding from a wound on his head, and one of Todoroki’s arms was broken so badly that his bones could be seen piercing out through his flesh. Yet they both dragged their injured bodies up and rose to defend their friend and classmate with all the strength left. 

Alas, their defence didn’t buy more than three seconds before the infernal blue fire broke through. Nonetheless, it took just enough time for Cementos to rise to a rampart of his own, thus managing to save Izuku’s life. 

A yellow flash started glinting into the devastated Imperial Gardens of Tokyo, and the Pro Heroes started quickly disappearing into thin air. 

However, when the yellow flash appeared again, one of All For One’s clones quickly raised his hand and shouted:

“Distort!”

It was the same Spatial Distortion quirk that one of the High-End Nomu had used to destroy Izuku’s arm in the battle at the UA High on the day of the Liberation Army’s revolution. 

To his shock, Minato suddenly found himself locked in space, unable to teleport away or move his body an inch. Moreover, he felt his control over space further decrease, and a feeling of dread washed over him as he sensed a twist appearing in space. 

“Father!”

A roar like that of a beast rang as Naruto turned into the demonic form of his Fox Quirk, and five claws tore through the AFO clone before it could even react, turning it into a puddle of mud. 

A massive tail swipe blasted another All For One clone into countless tiny mud droplets, but as Naruto was about to go for the third body of AFO, he suddenly found himself pinned in mid-air as if an invisible giant had just grabbed him in his huge hand. 

‘Telekinesis?!’ Naruto inwardly exclaimed, never having expected All For One to have such a quirk. 

His train of thought was broken as All For One used his Telekinesis Quirk to smash Naruto into the ground violently, making a huge crater after the impact. 

While the clone was busy using its telekinesis quirk to repeatedly slam Naruto into the ground, the original AFO fortified his body with several of his quirks to hold his own against Izuku in a physical battle. 

Luckily, during their chaotic battle, AFO didn’t have the leisure to keep an eye on Minato or try to capture him again, so he was free to take all the Pro Heroes away from the battle with his teleportation quirk. 

The previously destroyed two clones came into existence again from the original AFO’s body, and both of them rushed at the kyuubified-Naruto who was being pinned in mid-air with the first clone’s Telekinesis. 

“Finally! It’s mine!” the two clones shouted in glee as they lunged at him with their hands extended in front of them. 

The Adamantine Sealing Chains weren’t as important a quirk for AFO as the One For All quirk was, but they were a firm second priority for him. And now, after several decades, after almost losing hope thinking that the quirk had disappeared for good, he was finally going to get his hands on it. 

However, even as Naruto was being held immobile in mid-air, he wasn’t as powerless as AFO made the mistake of thinking. 

Four golden chains suddenly burst from his back. 

‘His Telekinesis hold on me broke?!’

The apparition of the Adamantine Sealing Chains not only cancelled the telekinesis affecting Naruto’s body, but it also stabbed through the two clones, making them disperse into mud. 

Whereas Naruto just barely got out of All For One’s telekinetic grasp, Izuku found himself in the same predicament but with no way to break out of it. 

“I almost wish All Might was alive so I could show him what came of his successor,” All For One said mockingly as he clenched his right hand, and Izuku started screaming in agony when he felt his body getting compressed and crushed as if he were in a hydraulic press. 

However, at that moment, a massive red appendage slammed into the original All For One’s back and hit him so hard that his body left a deep ravine into the ground as it rolled and tumbled away, obliterating all the trees in his way. 

When he got up from the ground, All For One’s head was twisted to his back like a doll, and his spinal cord appeared to have been crushed, but his Regeneration Quirk made it almost impossible for him to die from such ‘trivial’ wounds.  All those injuries were healed in a matter of seconds.


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