Chapter 60: Beyond Physics: The heat Death
[The Ruined Warehouse - The Center of the Void]
Sound did not fade away; it was murdered.
One moment, the battlefield was a cacophony of explosions, screaming metal, and roaring flames. The next moment, a heavy, suffocating blanket of silence descended upon the world. It wasn't the quiet of a library or a sleeping house. It was the absolute silence of a vacuum, where the air itself had become too rigid to carry the vibration of sound waves.
The colors of the night—the red of blood, the grey of concrete, the black of the sky—began to bleach out. Everything was covered in a thin, translucent layer of white frost that seemed to suck the vibrancy out of existence.
Dabi stood atop the rubble, his hand raised to deliver the killing blow to the boy below. He pushed his quirk. He willed the fire to erupt.
Fzzzt.
Nothing happened.
Dabi's turquoise eyes widened in genuine confusion. He tried again. He screamed internally, forcing his ducts to release the ignition fluid, forcing his body to spark.
A tiny, pathetic flicker of blue light appeared for a microsecond, then vanished as if choked by an invisible hand.
"Wha...?" Dabi mouthed the word, but no sound came out. He looked at his hands. They were turning pale, the veins standing out in stark blue contrast.
It wasn't that his quirk had been erased. It was something far more primal. Fire requires a chemical reaction. It requires excited molecules dancing and colliding.
But here... in this domain... nothing was allowed to dance.
Behind him, Toga Himiko collapsed. She didn't trip; her legs simply ceased to function. She clutched her chest, her mouth opening in a silent gasp. Her blood, usually hot and racing with adrenaline, was becoming sludge in her veins. Her heart struggled to pump the thickening fluid. Beside her, Twice fell to his knees, shivering so violently that his bones rattled, hugging himself as frost began to crystallize on his eyelashes.
They were dying. Not from an attack, but simply by existing near him.
In the center of this silent apocalypse stood Aokiji Kuzan.
He was no longer the boy from U.A. He was a statue carved from diamond and moonlight. His skin was encased in armor of dense, translucent ice. His hair was a frozen white flame.
He took one step.
CRUNCH.
The sound was shockingly loud in the silence. The atoms of the concrete floor didn't just break; they shattered at a sub-atomic level.
Shigaraki Tomura, driven by a madness that transcended self-preservation, lunged.
His eyes were bloodshot, fixed on the "monster" that was humiliating his League. He didn't care about the cold. He didn't care about the silence. He only wanted to destroy.
He rushed at Aokiji, his hand outstretched, five fingers ready to touch the ice armor.
Decay.
His fingers made contact with Aokiji's chest.
Normally, the decay would spread instantly, turning flesh and ice to dust.
But decay is a chain reaction. It requires the breakdown of bonds.
Shigaraki's fingers touched the ice, and they stopped. The effect did not spread. The ice did not crack. The laws of entropy had been reversed; instead of disorder, there was absolute, stagnant order.
Shigaraki looked at his hand in horror. Frost raced up his fingers, turning his skin grey and necrotic in an instant.
Aokiji didn't look at him. He didn't even blink.
He simply raised his leg and delivered a simple, front snap kick to Shigaraki's chest.
CRACK-BOOM!
It wasn't a martial arts technique. It was the force of a glacier moving forward. Shigaraki was launched backward as if hit by a cannonball. His frozen shoulder shattered on impact, fragments of his own flesh scattering like broken porcelain before he slammed into a distant wall, sliding down unconscious.
Aokiji lowered his leg. He turned his head slowly, scanning the area.
His eyes were terrifying. The iris and pupil were gone, replaced by a glowing, deep blue void. There was no recognition in them. No strategy. No humanity.
Only targets.
"This is troublesome..."
The voice cut through the silence, deep and resonant. Only one man had the power to force sound through this dead air.
All For One stood ten meters away. He was not attacking. For the first time, the Demon Lord was on the defensive.
A sphere of chaotic, red energy surrounded him—a combination of "Nuclear Heat Generation" and "Forcefield." He was burning massive amounts of energy just to keep his own body temperature from plummeting to fatal levels.
"Entropy..." All For One mused, his mask reflecting the white figure of the student. "He hasn't just lowered the temperature. He has halted the kinetic energy of the atoms themselves. This isn't a quirk anymore... it's a natural disaster."
All For One took a cautious step back. He realized the truth.
"If I touch him, even with my regeneration, my cells will die faster than they can heal. He has become the embodiment of the heat death of the universe."
Aokiji pivoted.
His targeting systems locked onto the nearest source of heat and movement.
It wasn't All For One.
It was the boy struggling to stand up from the rubble pile.
Katsuki Bakugo.
Bakugo was trembling. Not just from pain, but from the bone-seeping cold. He looked up, wiping blood from his chin, and saw Aokiji walking toward him.
"Oi..." Bakugo rasped, his voice barely audible in the thin air. "Ice block...?"
Aokiji didn't stop. He raised his hand. The air around Bakugo began to solidify into invisible needles of pressure.
Bakugo's eyes widened. He saw the look in Aokiji's face. It wasn't the look of a friend. It was the look of a machine.
"Oi! Stop it!" Bakugo shouted, trying to ignite a spark in his palm, but failing. "It's me! It's Bakugo! Are you blind?! I'm your teammate, you bastard!"
Aokiji tilted his head. The concept of "teammate" didn't exist in a brain where the electrical synapses were firing at near-zero efficiency. The extreme cold of the Awakening was suppressing his higher brain functions. Logic, emotion, memory—all were frozen. Only the instinct to eliminate "disturbance" remained.
Bakugo was a disturbance. A source of noise.
"Zero..." Aokiji whispered. The word carried the weight of a coffin lid closing.
He thrust his hand forward to turn Bakugo into a permanent ice sculpture.
Bakugo gritted his teeth, unable to move his battered legs. Is this how it ends? Killed by the guy I tried to save?
"DETROIIIIIIIT..."
The roar came from the sky, shattering the silence like a hammer striking glass.
A massive shadow fell between the two students.
".....SMAAAAAAAAASH!!!!"
All Might, in his muscle form, slammed his fist not into Aokiji, and not into the ground, but into the empty air space between them.
KA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The impact was cataclysmic.
All Might didn't use heat; he used pure, overwhelming wind pressure. The smash forced millions of cubic meters of air into the vacuum. The sudden shift in pressure created a shockwave that disrupted the static field of the Awakening.
The white frost shattered.
The silence was violently torn apart by the sound of rushing wind.
Aokiji was blown backward by the sheer force of the air pressure. He tumbled across the ground, his ice armor cracking and flaking off, before he slammed into a piece of concrete wreckage.
He didn't pass out. He rolled to a stop, gasping for air, clutching his head.
The glow in his eyes faded, returning to their natural dark color, but they were wide, wild, and unfocused. The Awakening had receded, but the toll it took was evident. He shook his head violently, trying to restart his frozen thoughts.
"Kuzan!"
Bakugo dragged his broken body forward, grabbing Aokiji by the collar of his tattered, burnt shirt. He shook him roughly.
"Snap out of it!" Bakugo roared, his face inches from Aokiji's. "Did you lose your damn mind?! You almost turned me into a popsicle!"
Aokiji blinked, his breathing ragged and visible in the cold air. He looked at Bakugo, then at his own trembling hands, then at the destruction around them. His brain felt like slush.
"Bakugo...?" Aokiji croaked, his voice hoarse. "Why... is it so loud?"
"Because All Might just saved your sorry ass from becoming a murderer!" Bakugo growled, though his grip on Aokiji's collar loosened slightly, revealing relief.
From the dust cloud, All Might stood tall. Steam rose from his body. He was bleeding from his mouth, and his time limit was dangerously close, but his back was broad and protective.
He faced All For One, who was still encased in his red energy sphere.
"You targeted my students..." All Might said, his voice vibrating with a terrifyingly quiet fury. "You forced a child to push his body beyond the brink of destruction... to lose his own soul to his power..."
All Might clenched his fists.
"I will not forgive you for this. All For One!"
All For One chuckled, though the sound was strained. He looked at the chaos, at the shivering villains, and the recovering students.
"He stopped the entropy..." All For One noted. "He broke the field with brute force. How very barbaric... and how very like you, All Might."
The Demon Lord raised his arms, darkness gathering around him.
"But look at them, Symbol of Peace. They are broken. Frozen. Burned. Can you fight me... while protecting two dying birds?"
.
.