That smile that Bruce has in his final moments really make me think he already passed OFA and already knew his successor was going to strengthen the quirk rather than fight straight away. So he knew the quirk would be safe and they had some advantage over afo

Yeah, he did pass it on before fighting AFO; every OFA wielder managed to pass it on before their death by AFO's hand. Only Banjo and En (excluding All Might and Midoriya) still held it when they fought AFO, so Bruce would've been like the others: fighting with the Ability/Quirk already passed on.

For reference, the excerpt from that volume extra with Banjo's face on it;

"All the predecessors besides the Fourth were indeed killed by All For One, but each one managed to pass on the Quirk before their death."

All For One killed them. But they passed on the Quirk before they faced him.

But also, Shinomori went into hiding to avoid society, I don't think he'd actually join the fight of the Resistance when they're fighting AFO's side—he's at the top of their chaotic land. It's a fight with the one who governs current society. The "demon lord". Most of the Resistance died with Kudo, so Bruce fighting AFO was either with whoever was left, or he was completely alone, and those are old corpses.

At Bruce's fight and eventual death with AFO, I think he might've gone back to where Kudo and the rest died. Whether he did or not, he took the last members with the Resistance for a last stand, if any remained. They probably did have some left; Kudo shouldn't have left Bruce to fight him and continue OFA, with no one on his side. Cruel, and a small platform for Bruce to stand on. The platform of the vestiges was already small compared to AFO when doing a symbolism of the power difference. Imagine Bruce on his own.

(This was when Nana and Yoichi pushed AFO+AFO/Tomura out of the vestige world)

Plus, since the Resistance started out of "our Leader [having] misgivings about the future", Kudo wouldn't have brought everyone to fight AFO. If he did, the Resistance ends right there; there has to be a chance their will and cause continues into the future, neverminding Bruce and OFA. I don't mean Yoichi's will here—I mean the Resistance's. Don't bring everyone to the death march.

But look at how we only see two others when Bruce died, and even after Bruce is clearly dead, AFO still tries getting an answer from him. He wouldn't have left any survivors in this fight, let alone Kudo's.

Since Shinomori got OFA when he was 22, I think he and Bruce had been something of colleagues before, especially since Bruce knew where to find him in the forests. Since Shinomori had run into the hermit life to escape society and its weirdos, citing it as a "horrible era"

Bruce could just trust him with it and ran back to the city. He knew where to find him, they're close in age, one decided to fight to restore society while the other ran from it for what it became...

He didn't choose a member of the Resistance. But Bruce made a smart choice for who the next successor would be. He chose fast (enough that AFO was still mad about Kudo and Yoichi to bother interrogating a corpse), and chose the guy who:

● lives off the radar

● has a will against AFO/society, driven enough that he went off to hide

● has an Ability that senses danger, so he can always escape or be warned in time

● can evade AFO and his influence repeatedly

● is cautious, if not careful

● isn't tempermental to go get himself killed, with enough fear to know to step back

● would be unknown and non-existent to AFO, because he avoids society, where the big evil lurks

Shinomori knew the instant he received the Quirk that he wasn't strong enough. Bruce would have to have been present to at least pass it on, so Bruce probably knew Shinomori's decision too, to build up the will.

Until En with his hair, each transfer was probably blood, since that was the OG method between Yoichi and Kudo that worked for sure.

When Bruce passed it to Shinomori, he chose a guy who didn't have an offensive Ability like him or Kudo (who managed to use his offensively when it was just small objects at his time). He chose a guy who could keep the wielder and Quirk safe, and would pass it on once he was done with his turn. I don't know if they knew Quirks stockpiled in OFA, but if they did, Bruce made a smart choice. If they knew or not, Bruce still chose well to ensure the will continued into the future, away from AFO's reach.

So yeah. Bruce passed One For All before fighting All For One, and likely knew Shinomori's intention. The reason he smiled could've been because he knew AFO would take another loss today, but the only details we got of his death are few. He smiled, fought, and died impaled, with dead comrades around, and AFO trying to get an answer out of him for Yoichi's whereabouts.

I'm still curious on why Bruce smiled because there are reasons we could put together, and reasons we don't know. Was it because he got one over AFO? Did he enjoy the fight? Because he was facing death in the face and couldn't help but smile? Because somewhere, One for All was growing to screw AFO over in the future? We don't know much of the fight's details itself beyond [AFO participated] and [Bruce was killed].

(Remembering how Bruce's Ability works just puts his fight against AFO as even more desperate or dire, really. He temporarily charges energy, but can only release it per limb once [ex. Midoriya still having a leg of Fa Jin]. So like when Midoriya used his individual fingers, Bruce only gets one shot for each body part he can think of. His strength with OFA isn't as much as it could be either, because he isn't the wielder anymore. All he has are the leftover fumes.)

hello it's me from that "afo keeps all the users body au" thank you for answering honestly🥺I do think another way i could go about the au(and torture poor yoichi even more. I love him he's a very pretty man but sometimes you gotta put him through the mental wringer😭but afo already did that) is that yoichi could be in a comatose state/locked in syndrome kinda where the final confrontation between him, afo, and kudou happens and instead of dying(NOT IN PIECES😠) he's just severely Injured and is knocked unconscious where he... never wakes up again... but he can still think, hear, smell and feel worldly sensations he just can't move his body at all. Or wake up. Bruce drags kudou away because kudou is too shell shocked to move so they can't take yoichi with them and afo just gets his mittens on him again(yippie😊yoichi is in my arms again🥰I totally wasn't the one that almost mortally wounded him by trying to kill that disgusting rebel, yes its all that bugs fault that my yoichi got hurt) only to realize that something is wrong because it's been weeks and yoichi STILL hasn't woken up. He's breathing and his wounds are healed but :( so afo takes yoichi to the doctors to figure out what's wrong(I'm not smart enough for the medical stuff so just pretend garaki did something smart with his equipment and figured it out.) "Ruh roh, it seems like ur brother Is suffering from smth called locked in syndrome☝️🥸he's not brain dead though meaning he can hear, feel, and smell sensations he just can't wake up or move his body so... sorry ab that" and afos like "while it's great that he can't run from me again and that he'll need me to take care of him ill miss his sweet voice and pretty eyes🥺doctor figure out a way to process his brain waves into sentences/words/pictures(???) Neeeoooow😤" meanwhile yoichi can hear everything and is just internally screaming cuz that's all he can do. He'll kinda go back n forth between the vestige realm and the front of his mind so if he's sick of afos yapping for the day he can just retreat there. I mean, he won't be lonely for long cuz kudou n them will join but it's gonna take a while.

ok that's the one where afo has his body but what if kudou and Bruce managed to haul yoichi with them while afo is in shock that he "mortally wounded" yoichi? Erm... he's still breathing, they treated his wounds but he hasn't woken up in 4 days. Uh oh. Bruce and kudou refuse to classify him as brain dead cuz he's still breathing on his own so they run tests on him(they had equipment to see quirks so why not some advanced medical tech too?) OK his brain is up and running but his body isn't...(yoichi wiggle the brain wave thingies if you think your brothers an ass!) (~~~~~~) (oh my god ok he's alive) anyway, while they don't know exactly what it's called they have an idea and decide to care for him n stuff till kudou decides to face a very pissed off afo who actually doesn't know yoichi is technically alive cuz hes too traumatized to realize that he gave yoichi an immortality quirk, so basically the rest of the story is yoichis very much alive self being passed on to future ofa users with instructions that are basically (heres the comatose yet very much aware and alive body of afos brother, take care of him and don't let afo know or get to him Kay bye!) In this version afo gives yoichi the immortality quirk in the vault while in the first version afo gives it to yoichi while he's comatose. I'd say about generations 5 to 7 is when afo FINALLY catches on to the fact that he gave yoichi an immortality quirk and just face palms before going on a large manhunt for yoichi where the ofa users just play hot potato with yoichi😭(but anon! If yoichi has an immortality quirk why didn't it heal him immediately and wake him up???) Well, when he, kudou, and Bruce were skeddadling from afo, ofa was in the process of transferring to kudou, meaning yoichi was actually in a very vulnerable state, quirk wise and body wise, so not only was that immortality quirk working overdrive, it was also in the process of transferring to someone else IDK PLOT ARMOR OR SMTH😭 anyway, yoichi got "mortally wounded" enough for the quirk itself to panic bc it doesn't have enough reserves to actually save its user so what does it do? It forces yoichi into a coma to preserve that tiny bit of energy to keep its user from dying. It succeeded! but now yoichi can't wake up since it used up the reserves to heal yoichis body and only the "crucial" areas of his brain which bodily autonomy/aka, movement of the muscles wasnt included apparently and now it thinks it's done its job because it's purpose was to keep the user alive😁(oh anon, since you came up with these great ideas why don't you go on and write it?) I can't write for shit lmao if I start this I'll only be able to write down one sentence then lose interest, SECOND OF ALL! these are just ideas, I ain't forcing or asking any of yall to make a story out of it I just wanna get my evil brain worms out of my head to share with people and listen to how others would go about these ideas. Their opinions and takes. And since there's not a lot of afofa sickos I tend to yap to the rare ones out there. Very exciting! Anyway, sorry for bugging you with my long rant, I'm not forcing you to do anything but I do wanna see your evil brain worms process this info especially now that you'll have access to yoichis thoughts on this and hey, if you need his sight for it, locked down syndrome can technically allow the person to blink only so ig he'd only be able to move his eyes and that's it oh God poor yoichi... uh sorry for yapping

Ooo an even more interesting premise 👀 Though I think in the first one I'd go with Yoichi having a lot of existential dread around what state he's in, and the OFA vault would make it worse because, at the time, he wouldn't know what it was. I think it would scare him, because while he doesn't want to be with his brother anymore, entering "his" part of the mindscape cuts off his outside awareness, meaning that he experiences nothing but The Void™ while in that space, which would make him think that going into that space is him walking closer to death. And, despite everything, Yoichi doesn't quite want to die just yet. Give it time :)

I think he'd figure it out eventually though, probably when AFO decides to, uh, enjoy Yoichi's new "compliance" and he decides that death is the better alternative. Then he gets to the mindscape and figures out that it just. loops back around to reality if he walks too far into it. Scream.

In either case though, I think that Yoichi would get pretty apathetic pretty fast. Or—not apathetic, but definitely ruthless. Harsher. He's leading his holders to his comatose body trying to get them to free him and they all keep dying >:( He knows this isn't fair, that he shouldn't keep calling people directly into AFO's arms (and nomu tanks) but that sort of constant numbness would wear him down. Probably much faster than the vault. He wants out, he wants to be slain out of mercy, he wants to be able to move and speak and run again, he wants somebody to save him, he wants his brother dead—his desperation probably kills the holders way faster than in canon, because he keeps pushing them towards their killer in hopes that they'll be the one that can finally save him. Finally stop AFO.

Meanwhile, AFO is trying his best to get Yoichi to wake back up. Because he always wanted Yoichi fully awake so he could banter and moan and scream at him, but now that Yoichi has a direct line to the other OFA holders, he turns out to be a very effective spy. The guards and minions think that just because he's not a physical threat means that they can say whatever they want around him, like locations, plans, plants, things of that nature, and All For One doesn't figure how those stupid heroes keep foiling him so well for months before he discovers just where it is Yoichi retreats to when his brain waves idle. That he's the one leaking information. And then he punishes Yoichi for it, in the very best way he knows how; forcing him to be present and making him feel. For AFO noncon can be corrective 🙏 Domestic punishment.

Plus, on the other side of the coin, if Yoichi was rescued by his vigilantes beforehand but has an immortality Quirk still, then that means that his body gets toted around from place to place with the current holder so AFO can't get his hands on him. This has the hilarious side-effect of meaning that Yoichi gets propped up in a chair at OFA meetings and everyone has to treat him like he's an active part of the meeting, because they all know he's awake. It's incredibly awkward and nobody likes it lmao.

Idk, I think you could have a lot of fun with it! Especially if Yoichi finds a way to still be an active threat :3 My boy is so beautiful and so so spiteful ✨ A little thing like whole body paralysis won't stop him for long!