Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There can be too much of a good thing. Like silence. What’s normally a peaceful tranquility can turn a strong person mad, given enough time. 

Luckily, Izuku hadn’t gotten to that point. Yet. 

He kicked a chunk of broken concrete as he walked down the ruined street, using One For All. The buildings beside him sported massive cracks and caved in roofs. And this area had just been hit by a shockwave. 

The rock he’d kicked shot to the crumbling remain of a building, bounced off it hard enough to shoot to the other side of the street, where it bounced off a single standing wall, before pathetically falling down and landing in a bucket with a clang!

The sound was enough to drive the maddening silence away. 

He focused on the scuff of his boots against the shattered pavement, and the rustling of his lead-fiber suit, his breath filtering in and out of the masked-helmet he wore. Anything to fill the air with some reminiscence of the bustle that used to take place in the city. 

He passed by the melted remains of gas stations. Splintered shards of glass skyscrapers. Entire housing districts and apartments reduced to nothing but crumbling stone. Wilted billboards and staggered roads. Musutafu was unrecognizable. 

Even Izuku, who’d lived there his entire life, had no way of connecting the ruined landscape with his home. 

He ignored the obvious reminders of human life. Boiled corpses and fried bones, anyone who’d survived the initial blast was dead within hours due to radiation poisoning. By now, six months later, all the burned flesh had mostly deteriorated. Mostly. 

If only he’d been seconds faster… he could’ve prevented all of this from happening. It was his fault. 

He shouldn’t have survived. 

He shook off these thoughts, having already traced the downward spiral they led to. 

Instead, he continued his way further from the center of the city. On the outskirts, things weren’t as damaged, but the radiation had still fulfilled its deadly purpose. 

The trip could’ve been a lot faster if he used One For All, but there wasn’t really a point. There was nobody left to save. No one left who needed him. 

His life was pointless. 

He had to shake his head a bit harder that time to lose the thought. Finally, he arrived at his destination. 

When the radiation levels had dropped enough for him to leave his shelter, using this special suit, of course, he’d scouted the entire city for any supplies that might still be intact. 

Well, before that he'd desperately searched for life, knowing full well he wouldn’t find any. Coming to terms with that in the shelter had nearly broken him, knowing he’d never see his friends again. Or Ochako again. 

The thought of her streaked a longing pain through his heart, greater than anything he felt thinking of his friends. 

He’d failed them. Why should he still be living when they died? 

The first week after the bombs were fired had been the hardest. 

The only place he’d been able to find with some usable supplies was a small shop in the rural parts outside the city. There were some blankets and clothes in the basement. The owners must’ve been conspiracy theorists, because the basement walls were fortified with lead. 

That was good for Izuku, though, because it meant he could actually have something soft to sleep on instead of the hard floor of the shelter. 

The shelter’s generator was slowly failing, so Izuku planned to turn the functions like temperature control off. Hence the extra blankets. 

Clean clothes were nice too, although they’d have to be decontaminated. 

As he exited the shop with the blankets and clothing in hand, his eyes involuntarily landed on the seared remains of the shop owners. 

Those who had died instantly were fortunate. But these people had been burnt alive. 

Bones really are white, by the way. 

But these ones were a chipping-gray color. 

He quickly turned away from the sight, although it remained stamped in his memory. His stomach convulsed. He couldn’t throw up with the helmet on, even as he felt his stomach acid rising up in his throat. He swallowed the nausea and just focused on the movement of his lungs, in and out. 

In and out. 

In and. 

Out. 

A sigh left his lungs as he started his slow walk back. He stared at the sun in an attempt to burn away the memory. 

When he reached the area with the bucket, he kicked another stone, which also ended up landing in the bucket with a clang!

At least he still had his quirk to talk to. 

“Lookit that, you scored five points! What, that puts it at thirty now?”

Izuku smiled lightly and turned his head to see Nana Shimura’s vestige, floating along beside him. She glowed faintly pink, although he felt her in his conscious more than he actually saw her, and yet she and the other vestiges had become the most real people to him these past few months. 

“It’s actually thirty five. You were arguing with Daigoro about whose quirk is more useful on my way to the shop.”

She snapped her nonexistent fingers. “That’s right! And hey, you need to stop listening to all our conversations, just because you’re more in tune with us now. Vestiges deserve privacy too!”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “That’s a little hypocritical, dontcha think? You never spared yourself from my conversations.”

“Dying gives you the right to eavesdrop, because you can’t have any pleasures from life anymore,” she deduced. “And may I remind you, you haven’t died yet!”

He looked down, and a shadow fell over his face. “It’s not like I get any pleasures from life either, so I might as well be dead. If you look at it that way, I can eavesdrop too.”

She frowned deeply at him. “C’mon, kid.” He was twenty five and she still called him that. “You gotta look at the bright side…”

He looked away from her, towards the city, imagining the skyscrapers that used to stand there. Now it was just a rocky wasteland. No buildings, no homes, no people. 

No human connection. 

Without that, was there really any point at all?

It wasn’t good to cry in the helmet either, but this time he couldn’t stop it. Izuku had always released his emotions through tears. 

It was unfortunate his declining mind decided to spew out thoughts too. 

The signs were obvious. You should’ve seen it coming. 

He clenched his eyes shut, forcing drops out as he remembered the first bombing. A large shopping mall turned into a plume of smoke. Hundreds died. 

How could you have been so blind to miss such blatant cues!?

It was clear the Cause had been gaining support, maybe even enough to bribe certain officials. But he hadn’t caught it soon enough. 

And you had been so close to stopping them during your first encounter, before any bombings! Why couldn’t you do your job right?

The sound of a bullet whizzing past his ear echoed in his memory. He’d dodged instead of attacking. Maybe if he’d acted differently, everyone would still be alive. 

And now that everyone’s dead, why should you be the only left alive? You, the person who failed them. 

He opened his watery eyes and saw the hellscape before him through a lens of tears. The day his living ended replayed in his head. 

“It was quite a bright flash,” he murmured. 

“That’s not what I meant by looking on the bright side!”

In response to Nana’s complete failure in cheering him up, two more vestiges came out of the realm of One For All to speak with him. A red one and a purple one. 

“Oh come on, Nana! You just made him more upset!” Daigoro complained. 

“Yes, you utterly failed,” Hikage agreed. 

Nana huffed. “I’d like to see you do any better!”

Izuku sighed, wishing he could wipe the tears from his face. When the vestiges were inside their realm he could tune them out, but when they came into the open like this…

“Kiddo,” Daigoro also called him something childish. “You’ve just gotta stick a pen in your mouth.”

“I do not believe recommending drugs in any situation is a good idea,” Hikage commented. 

“No, no! I mean, between his teeth, not inside his mouth!” Daigoro clarified. “It tricks the brain into thinking he’s smiling.”

“Real smiles are better,” Nana asserted. 

“Yeah, but the kid ain’t gonna be having any real smiles nowadays!”

Izuku groaned. “I’m right here.”

“Oh snap, sorry,” Daigoro apologized, before moving forward to put his faded hands on Izuku’s shoulders. He could’ve walked forward through the vestige, but instead stopped to peer up at the strong-chinned ghost. 

“The point we’re all trying to make is, you’ve been acting more ‘n more gloomy, and it’s getting pretty concerning. Take it from a person who’s actually died, you’ve still got a lot more to live for.”

Izuku frowned in disbelief. “Like what?”

Daigoro slapped his hand to his chest in mock-offense. “Is having us not good enough for you!?”

“No, it’s not that. As loud as you guys can get, I still appreciate you keeping me company. It’s just…” he paused for a moment. “You know me, I’ve always wanted to be a hero. Save people. Now since that’s gone…” he shrugged apathetically. 

This caused Daigoro to back away, grimacing. 

Hikage crossed his arms and shook his head. “He’s got a point. His entire life’s purpose is gone.”

The fourth had to immediately dodge a punch from Nana, using his danger sense. 

“You’re not supposed to say that!” she exclaimed. 

“Says the person who made him have the mental breakdown in the first place,” Daigoro retorted. 

Izuku pursed his lips as their bickering continued, when suddenly a new voice broke into their conversation. 

“Will you all shut up and let him talk to his dad.”

The second user’s tone was terse, but it wasn’t rude. He’d always made Izuku think of what Bakugo could be like without constant angry outbursts. 

Oh and there went his emotions again, thinking about people he could no longer care for. 

“He’s not my dad,” Izuku retorted. 

The blond scoffed lightly. “Yeah, well he’s the closest thing you have to one. Especially now.”

At his words, the other three vestiges faded back into One For All, and Second soon followed suit. Once they were all gone, a golden vestige emerged out into Izuku’s consciousness. 

“Young Midoriya, are you faring well?” All Might asked. 

“You already know the answer to that,” Izuku replied, continuing his walk. “No, I’m not.”

All Might, or the piece of him that was left, floated alongside his successor. “I’m sorry for what’s happened to you.”

“You’ve said that before, and it’s not your fault. With the state you were in… there was nothing you could’ve done to help.”

“Yes, I cannot argue with that. However… I still feel I am partially to blame for you having such an intense need to save people to feel satisfied. You know, you can enjoy life outside of being a hero.”

Izuku looked at All Might incredulously. He’d had a social life, and a love life at that. 

“Even when there’s nobody alive? No friends or family?”

“Er- well, yes. That does make it a little more difficult to enjoy life.”

“A little!?”

“Well, okay, a lot.”

“And look around!” Izuku exclaimed. “There is nothing left! Nothing and nobody left to care for! What am I even supposed to do?!”

Tears were already threatening to spill again, and for a moment, All Might could do nothing but watch in sympathy. 

“Young Midoriya…”

“Sorry All Might, but this isn’t something I can fix with a smile or brute force,” Izuku croaked. 

The vestige sighed, an action that was only heard; it couldn’t disturb the radioactive air. “Young Midoriya, as I got older and less able, I began noticing things I’d never noticed before. Like the wonderful feeling of breath in your lungs or the beauty of an autumn tree outside the window.”

“There are no trees, or safe air!”

“Maybe not, but the point I’m trying to get at is, you can still enjoy the small things. The details that life pays no attention to. Focus on what you still have, rather than what you’ve lost.”

The building above the shelter came into sight, and Izuku hummed. 

“Alright, fine. I’ll try to remember that.”

All Might faded off, satisfied with his answer. 

The fallen skyscraper before him covered the entrance to the shelter with its rubble. When he’d first come out into the daylight again, he’d needed to use One For All at its max to clear an exit. 

Now, however, he found the battered staircase leading down into the radiation-proof refuge and entered the closest thing he had to a home. It was the place the order to launch the nuclear missiles had come from. 

He went through a machine that decontaminated him, as well as the clothing and blankets he was carrying. Once fully inside, he yanked the helmet off of his head, taking a deep breath of the dusty, but not irradiated, air. 

Within the bunker itself, the design was simple. One massive U-shaped desk, completely adorned in buttons and switches and levers from end to end. 

Two of those key-holes were the cause of planetary destruction. 

There were some chairs scattered around, and then a monitor that expanded the entire wall. Since Izuku had lived there, a few blankets had been fluffed into a makeshift bed, and food cans from the sub-basement had been moved up. A CD player to fill the unbearable silence. 

His mind strayed to something else in the sub-basement… but that didn’t require any attention at the moment. 

Going by the saying, ‘home is where the heart is,’ there was only one thing that truly made it a home. 

His gaze fell upon the little All Might keychain, hanging off a lamp on the floor, next to his blanket bed. 

Voices from what felt like a past life filled his thoughts. 

“Hey, just in case this operation falls through, I want you to have this!”

“What? No, I couldn’t take that back. It was for you on Christmas, keep it.”

Her soft hands pushed the keychain back into his calloused palm. “How about this? Think about it as a good luck charm. It’ll keep your hopes up, so you’ll be more likely to win!”

He looked down at the keychain for a moment more, before closing his hand around it and smiling. “Okay. I’ll keep it.”

“Nice!” She gave him a quick kiss on his freckled cheek, something that still managed to send a flutter through his heart, and she was off. 

He never saw her again. 

The single memory was enough to cause a yearning pain in his heart, and his lungs constricted as his eyes welled up. 

He dumped the clothing and blankets next to his bed, before moving towards the CD player. He clicked play and skipped a few songs to get to the one he wanted: Dancing With Your Ghost by Sasha Sloan.

~Yelling at the sky. Screaming at the world~

He sighed and ran his hands down his face, which was damp now. When he felt another being spilling into his consciousness, he quickly tried to wipe the tears away. 

~Holding on too tight. Head up in the clouds~

“Hey, Yoichi,” he croaked, utterly failing to hide his flooding emotion from the shining-white vestige. 

~Heaven only knows where you are now~

The first user smiled kindly at him. “You only put this song on when you’re missing her.”

“Hah, really? …I never noticed.”

“Yes, and today seemed to be a particularly challenging day for you. You realize you can talk to us vestiges, right? We might not be living, but we can still support you,” Yoichi explained, moving closer to Izuku. 

Izuku didn’t know why he thought he could lie to someone who literally knew all his thoughts and experiences, but he still said, “Don’t worry, I’m alright.”

~I stay up all night, tell myself I’m alright~

Yoichi quirked an eyebrow. “The song says otherwise.”

Izuku puffed a breath out through his nose. “I guess… I guess I just feel like a failure. I couldn’t save everyone- no, I couldn’t save anyone. Not… not even her.”

~Every night I’m dancing with your ghost~

Yoichi hummed gently, and fresh tears sprouted in Izuku’s eyes. “I don’t even have a picture or anything,” his voice cracked, “I wish I could see her again.”

~Never got the chance, to say a last goodbye~

The luminant vestige pursed his lips. “Unfortunately, there’s not much I know about heartbreak, so I’m unable to help you cope with that. However, know you’re not a failure. You are the best holder of One For All there’s ever been, and the rest of the vestiges share that opinion.”

Izuku clenched his jaw. “The world around me says otherwise.”

“I hope you’ll be able to change that perception, because like Yagi said, there’s still a point to your life.”

“Yeah, well…” he sniffled and wiped his nose, “Without people to help, and without my friends, and without Ochako, it really doesn’t feel like it.”

~I put the record on, wait ‘til I hear our song~

Yoichi’s pale face crumpled, realizing there wasn’t much of anything he could do to sway the broken hero’s mind. So he sighed lightly and said, “Would you like Nana to come out?”

~Every night I’m dancing with your ghost~

Izuku nodded and he blinked more reproducing tears out of his eyes. Yoichi faded away, and soon Nana replaced him. 

Sadness lined her smile as she beckoned him over.  “C’mere, kid.”

~How do I love, how do I love again?~

He walked over to her faded pink figure, and they did the closest thing to hugging as they could get. When Izuku touched the floating vestiges, it felt like touching a vague vibration of energy. He circled his arms around this energy, and Nana hugged him back. 

They swayed gently to the music. 

~Baby, you’re just harder to see than most~

If he closed his eyes tight enough, if he argued his mind long enough, then he could just about convince himself it was Ochako he was dancing with. 

~Every night I’m dancing with your ghost~

At least he could pretend, because right now, that was the only thing keeping him off the edge. 

Newton’s third law of motion: opposites attract. It’s a good thing that applies to alternate dimensions too. 

“Ochako, are you sure you’re clear to be here?” Tsu asked through the comms. 

She was facing three thugs, who were glaring and spitting at her, their saliva landing on the alleyway floor. Inexperienced and arrogant. Easy work. 

Ochako slid into a fighting stance, mustering the most confident expression she could. “Yeah, I’ve got this!”

“I know you’re still recovering. You don’t have to push it.”

The mouthguard she wore bounced up and down against her neck as she ran forward. It wasn’t hers, and she wasn’t used to it. 

“Don’t worry about me, Tsu, I’m fine!” She physically proved her point as she took out the first thug, one with a horns mutation, with a floating kick to the face. She still had to prove she was fine mentally, though. 

“You know, you sound like him.”

She tried to land five fingers on the next person, but her hand changed course after Tsu’s words, giving the thug the chance to dodge. He had a slight speed enhancement quirk, and blurred away from her. 

“Not the time Tsu!” 

If he had a speed enhancement quirk, then he’d have to get close to her to attack. Newbies typically came in from behind…

Ochako whipped around just in time to plant a hand on the thug’s shoulder, and he slowly began his ascent into the atmosphere. She’d make sure to pull him back down before he got too far. 

But for that, she’d have to defeat the last person, who had a quirk that allowed her to control her hair like extremities. 

Ochako removed her gravity, and kicked off towards the side, to the alleyway wall. The thug shot her hair tendrils at her, and ensnared her ankles. 

Hah, what an amateur. 

With one hand, Ochako reached down and grabbed the coils of hair, and with the other, shot off her grappling hook towards the roof of the adjacent building. It retracted, pulling her up into the sky, and pulling the thug along with her. 

Using inertia and her own strength, she flung the villain up into the air, and on the villain’s way back down, the hero tagged her. With that, all three were sufficiently neutralized. 

“See that, Tsu! I’ve got it covered!” Ochako exclaimed triumphantly into the comms, landing on the rooftop. 

“This is the first time you’re out doing hero work for a few months, Ochako,” Tsu commented. “Take it slow, there’s no need to rush back into it.”

She didn’t respond, instead choosing to peer over the edge of the building to see the police arriving. They arrested the horned thug, who was still on the ground, and Ochako brought down the other two from the sky. 

As she continued on her patrol, she spoke lowly to Tsu. “This is what he would want me to do. He’d want me to keep helping people, no matter what pain I’m in.”

“But he’d also want you to take care of yourself, Ochako. He loved you, and he wouldn’t want you starting again if you’re not ready.”

Tsu’s words only made the ache in her heart grow more wistful, as she remembered their times together. Their dates were never out-there or particularly special, but they were heartfelt, and that’s what mattered. Buying coffee, or going on walks, burning everything they tried to bake, and falling asleep on the couch together watching a movie. 

Those were the things that made her happy. He made her happy. 

Suddenly, she found herself unable to breathe, her throat constricted with sorrow and guilt she hadn’t done more to save him. She gripped onto his mouthguard, around her neck. 

She’d never feel his rough hand against her cheek again, or be held in his warm embrace. 

And his smile. 

Pictures just weren’t the same. They couldn’t capture the same radiating joy. 

The next breath she took came out as a sob, and she realized she had tears in her eyes. She quickly wiped them away. During a patrol, she couldn’t afford to be distracted by her emotions. 

Besides, this is what he would want her to do. He’d want her to keep trying, to never give up, to always strive to save as many people as possible. If she’d had the chance to hear his dying words, this is what he would’ve wished for. To help people. 

She felt she was honoring his memory by pushing forward, no matter the cost to herself. 

Because that’s what he’d always done. 

So when she finally replied to Tsu, she was lying. “Again, Tsu, I’m fine! I’m just helping people like he would want!”

Her friend sighed, “If you say so…”

Later, the door swung open to her apartment, and she stumbled in, mind weary from forging ahead the entire day. 

She instantly went for the leftover popcorn from the day before. The girls had held a movie night in an attempt to cheer her up. It hadn’t worked. 

She looked at her phone and noticed the nine missed calls… she probably should’ve checked in on her agency. However, she’d been avoiding that place. It was where she’d first heard the news about Izuku’s death. 

“A bullet, right into his brain. He probably barely had a thought before, boom. He was just gone.”

A newfound organization called the ‘The Essential’ had been trying to steal some supplies from a small lab building. They’d had nearly undetectable levels of activity since the incident. 

“Wow, what a lame way for the number one hero to go, just a gunshot to the head.”

Now she felt like punching something, but she couldn’t do anything but clench her fist and her eyes in an attempt to hold back more emotion. He’d acted too hastily, always throwing himself head first into danger, and she hadn’t been there to stop him. 

She hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye. 

Her watery eyes traveled wishfully over to the door, where she only hoped Izuku would knock and stroll in, wearing his worry-melting smile. He’d done that frequently, at least once a day before he- before he died. 

She settled the bowl of popcorn down on the counter, before walking over to an old radio. She needed something to fill the silence, because she kept expecting to hear Izuku’s knocking, a sound she knew would never come. 

The radio crackled to life, and began playing a song: Waiting For Superman by Daughtry

~She’s been… locked up inside her apartment a hundred days~

Ochako picked up the stale popcorn again, and settled down on her couch. She sunk into the cushions, letting their comfort envelope her. 

~She says… yeah he’s still coming, just a little bit late. He got stuck at the laundromat, washin’ his cape~

Her eyes drifted over to the window. It was dusk, the deep blue of night and blazing red of the sunset combining to make a wonderful purple, speckled with stars. She grinned, thinking about her and Izuku’s nights stargazing. 

~And she smiles. Oh, the way she smiles~

The grin turned into a grieving grimace, and she stood up to stride over to the window. She looked up with wide, glistening eyes at the tiny sparks of light. 

~She’s talking to angels, she’s counting the stars~

Ochako knew she needed to move on. She needed to let her connection to Izuku whither, and die off. That way, the gnawing sadness would leave her heart alone. 

But without human connection… what’s the point? Yeah sure, she still had her friends and family, but Izuku had been the most important to her for years, and now that thread of love had been cut early. 

Deep in her chords, she knew she’d never stop waiting for his knock on the door. 

~Waiting for Superman to pick her up… in his arms~

And her anger burned as strong as the stars she was staring at. She wanted- needed- the people who’d murdered him to be punished accordingly. It wasn’t revenge, it was just a severe thirst for fairness in due time. 

It wasn’t only her fault for not keeping him alive, it was also theirs. 

But that wouldn’t be easy, with how the organization had dropped under the radar. 

~She’s been… chasing an answer, a sign lost in the abyss~

From her conversations with class A, she knew they felt the same way. Izuku, one of their closest friends, had his existence snuffed out before he could even realize what was happening. There was no way they were going to let the people who committed such a crime scamper off. 

They all wished for him back, but that was impossible. So they wished for justice instead. 

~Yeah he’s still coming, just a little bit late. He got stuck at the five and dime, saving the day~

Ochako thudded her forehead against the window and pounded it with her fist, squeezing her eyes closed with tears. Maybe Tsu had been right about her not being ready. Returning to hero work had only opened the dam of memories. 

He’d just thrown himself into the pit of self-sacrifice, even though she’d warned him against it numerous times. If he’d only been more careful. If only she’d been there with him. 

She felt the mouthguard around her neck, still wearing it despite changing out of her hero costume. 

~If life was a movie, it wouldn’t end like this~

But life isn’t perfect, is it? It isn’t a movie, and Ochako just had to accept the way her story had played out for her. 

~She’s talking to angels, she’s counting the stars~

But still, as she stared at the stars, blurry dots through her tears, she could only hope. She could only hope that somehow, in some way, she’d see his gracious form again. She desperately hoped to once more see his kind eyes light up at the sight of her, and the warm smile he only wore around her. 

Though it was the most irrational, unlikely hope of all, it helped keep the broken hero together. 

~Waiting for Superman to pick her up… in his arms~

Izuku’s death had affected the entirety of class A negatively. He’d been such an integral part of their atmosphere, it just couldn’t be the same without him. The air lacked peace and joy in their reunions. 

Izuku’s absence had left a hole in each of their lives. Some holes were bigger than others. 

Ochako’s was by far the most devastating. 

~Save her now, before it’s too late tonight~

At least nuclear fallout didn’t affect the twinkling of the stars. That was looking at the positive, focusing on the small wonders like All Might said, right?

Izuku was trying to follow his predecessor’s advice. Currently, he was laying on the rooftop of a barely stable building, gazing at the vast expanse of space above him. It was awe-inspiring how the sky filled up one’s entire vision. Every bit of Izuku’s sight was taken up by the spots of light within the black sky. 

The helmet impaired this view slightly, but it was still better than what he got within the shelter. 

He knew he was supposed to be thinking about all the little joys he still got to experience, but the longer he stared at the stars, the more empty he felt. 

Ochako used to love star-gazing. 

The familiar pool of guilt and grief swelled in his stomach, and he sat up. The blackened concrete was less painful to look at than the stars. He soon moved to the edge of the roof to sit, dangling his legs over the side of the building. 

He spied down at the street, then eyed the sky again. The stars, for all their beauty and mystery, could not begin to fill the hole in his heart left by the absence of those he loved. 

What’s even the point?

He leaned forward, closer to the edge, a dangerous shift of weight. His heart rate spiked, and his lungs puffed air in and out, fogging up his helmet. The ground far beneath him was blurry, now. 

So he yanked off the helmet. 

The air seemed to tingle against his skin, like microscopic pin needles stabbing him repeatedly, but not enough to be considered painful. 

A golden vestige exploded into his consciousness. 

“Woah woah, Young Midoriya, what are you doing!? The air is irradiated, it’s not safe to take your helmet off!” All Might exclaimed, his glowing face darkened with worry. 

“Yeah, so?”

The sheer apathy in that question sent a chill of dread down All Might’s spine. 

“What did we talk about yesterday?! About finding joy in the small things, that there can still be meaning to your life!” His voice turned to a beg. “Please, Young Midoriya, do not so needlessly give everything up!”

Izuku clenched his fist, his fingers tightening on the keychain he’d brought along. 

“I’m sorry All Might, but… but without human connection, what’s the point?”

He leaned further forward. The lightest push would be enough to send him down, down to the ground. 

All Might floated around to his front, the golden shine of his figure blocking his means of escape. 

“There is a point, you just have to look closely for it. What truly doesn’t have a point is the action you’re contemplating right now.”

Izuku’s brow wrinkled in sad and hopeless thought, as he breathed in the stinging air. He leaned forward again. 

But then he found he couldn’t. Something was pulling him back, like a magnetic force, but if he was the magnet. He was quickly dragged away from the ledge, and All Might’s eyes were wide in shock. 

Izuku turned around to see what the vestige was staring at. 

It couldn’t be described with words. It was like a swirling mess of metallic air, pulsing and swimming and dancing in a circular fashion, drawing him in. 

He grabbed onto the concrete ledge, and that soon became the only thing keeping him from being sucked into the portal or vortex or warpgate or whatever it was. 

“What… is… this?” he asked through gritted teeth, but All Might had already faded back into his realm. 

He rapidly lost the battle to the force of the vortex, and a few seconds later, pop. 

He was gone.

Chapter Text

When Izuku opened his eyes again, at first it seemed nothing had changed. 

The stars were still glimmering above him. He was still sprawled out on the same rooftop. The vortex had sucked him in and spit him out into the same miserable world. 

Then he heard the blaring of a car horn. 

He sat bolt upright, the sound startling his thought and hope. It was then he realized, he was indeed in the same place. 

It was just a different world. 

The city was still standing, glittering with its electrical lights from advertisements or apartment buildings, the blaze getting dimmer as the constructs faded out into suburbs. This dazzling of man-made light was somehow more brilliant than the spheres of burning gas above him. 

It meant there were living breathing people around him. His grip tightened on the All Might keychain, as the vestige of All Might floated out into his consciousness again. 

“Young Midoriya, are you alright?” he asked worriedly, but that fear quickly faded as his eyes landed on the intact city around them. 

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine,” Izuku affirmed, gazing with wonder at the scene. 

The concrete beneath him wasn’t charcoal anymore, instead a smooth gray. He heard the rumble of car engines as they rolled down the street. The air wasn’t pricking his skin anymore, and he breathed in deep, tasting the cool, fresh air of the night. A sharp contrast to the dust of the shelter. 

As the sensation finished, his confusion took its place. His mind begged the question, how?

How was the city still sound? How was the air not irradiated, killing all the signs of life around him? What had the vortex done?

Had he been transported through time? Was he given another chance to fix his clumsy mistake? Or was this a different world entirely? Multiversal travel had been all the rage in movies. 

He was definitely in the same place, the same building he’d been on before. But everything was restored the way he remembered it. 

“What… happened?” All Might mirrored his thoughts, and within One For All, Izuku could sense the other vestiges’ confusion too. 

“I’m not sure,” he answered honestly. “But… but it looks just like it did before… everything.”

“That means…” the vestige’s eyes widened as he realized, and Izuku nodded in confirmation, “That means everyone else might still be alive.”

A faint smile graced his lips, hope swelling in his chest. “Maybe. But still, how is that even possible?”

All Might frowned, his guess as good as his successor’s. 

Scuffling sounds in the alleyway beside Izuku dragged his thoughts away from these whirling questions. He tore his eyes away from the gleaming city to look down the shadowed alleyway. 

Oh, it was a mugging. Why was it always a mugging?

He used to get at least one of these a day, and it got to the point where he’d barely put any thought into it and still have the thug detained in less than five seconds. 

But now, after not running through those motions in such a long time, the prospect of being able to help someone enthused his mind more than anything had in months. All Might chuckled at this, before returning within his realm so Izuku could concentrate.

Even simply analyzing the situation exhilarated him, his heart pulsing in his ears. Just two thugs, picking on a college student, and also picking at his wallet. 

Blades sprouted from the thug’s fingers and pierced through the student’s shoulder, the thug demanding more money. The yelp of pain from the student was all Izuku needed to spring into action. 

The excitement of being able to save someone and the thrill of the fight might’ve impaired Izuku’s ability to restrain himself, because by the time he was done, the two thugs were unconscious with a couple severe bruises. 

Izuku grimaced at the unneeded violence, before turning to make sure the college student was okay. 

They’d already run away. 

Apparently they’d also thought it was a bit more force than necessary. 

Izuku shot Blackwhip up to the edge of the roof and, empowering his frame with green crackling energy, flung himself up into the sky. The streak of light strikingly contrasted against the black night. At the tip of his jump, he activated Float, and gazed down at the sparkling city. 

He had to find out what miracle had happened to bring him here, to rewind his failure. 

He fingered the keychain in the pocket of the radiation-proof suit, which he’d have to change out of. 

More importantly, were his friends alive?

Ochako frowned at the two battered thugs on the alleyway floor. Of course, the best way to start her early morning patrol, an unreported incident. She already had a hard enough time willing herself out of bed in the morning!

It wasn’t ordinary for villains to target random thugs, but heroes were supposed to file their papers and call the police for things like this, not just, leave. It made a mess for someone else to clean up. 

And now, that someone else was her. 

She sighed as she raised her hand to the comms in her helmet, wrist bumping his- her mouthguard as she did so. 

She called her agency and the police, explaining the situation, before checking the status of the two villains. Some officers and medics arrived shortly, asked her a few questions, and she observed them treating the thugs and cuffing them. 

Her thoughts drifted off in the dejected direction they typically did as she fidgeted with the mouthguard. 

“Oh hey, Ochako!” a bright voice called, startling her. 

Her head whipped around, only to find big red eyes that were crinkled up in a smile. The girl had a tumbling cascade of white hair drawn up in a ponytail, side bangs framing her cheerful complexion. A horn protruded from the corner of her forehead. 

Ochako lowered her fidgeting hand to her side and forced a smile to her lips. “Hi, Eri. Wasn’t expecting to see you here. I thought you’d still be sleeping in your dorms, this early on a Sunday.”

Eri shrugged, eyes tracing the older girl’s strained smile. “Just finished a night patrol for my work study at Shinso’s agency. Heading back to UA to sleep now.”

Ochako looked the girl up and down. “You don’t look tired…?”

“That’s ‘cause I stole some of Shinso’s coffee!” the unicorn exclaimed excitedly. “You know how difficult that is? He’s so protective of it!”

The pro hero’s face cracked into something a little more genuine, chuckling lightly. Eri’s eyes lit up at being able to cheer her up. 

“So anyway, what’re you up to?” Eri questioned, looking over at the working police. 

“Oh, just some scuffle nobody cared to report,” Ochako waved her hand dismissively. “Based on the bruises, it might’ve been a villain who knocked them out, but it’s rare for a villain to attack simple thugs. Not the best thing to start the morning with, but at least I’m having a get together with the girls later today.”

Eri hummed, before giving a small laugh. “You know, this seems just like something he would do.”

“He?” Ochako asked distantly, already knowing the answer. 

The hero student nodded vigorously. “Remember how he would speed around the city, saving so many people and stopping so many villains, he’d forget to file them all? Iida would always berate him about it.”

While she snickered, Ochako only averted her eyes, pursing her lips in an attempt to hold back memories. 

“I don’t think this was him,” she replied softly over the lump in her throat. 

Eri realized she’d only reversed the previous progress made, so she reached out and brushed the older girl’s arm. Ochako only drew away. 

The unicorn looked away dismally, before moving her gaze to the shining blue sky. 

“Last night, I saw a streak of lightning in the sky,” Eri began, and Ochako gave her a side glance. “It wasn’t raining, or even thundering, you know. And the light streaked upwards. Shinso didn’t see it, said I was hallucinating, but the image is still burned into my memory.”

The pro hero narrowed her eyes. “What are you saying?”

As the police and medics packed up, Ochako knew they’d both have to go their separate ways in a second. 

The girl shrugged again. “It just looked really familiar.” She looked the hero in the eyes. “And you know he wouldn’t want us despairing. He’d want us to keep smiling, finding joy in stuff even when he isn’t here.”

Ochako broke eye contact. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

As they parted ways, the older girl wiped away a tear. Her smile had been broken with Izuku’s death. 

But somehow, Eri’s hadn’t. 

Izuku stared at the monument, chest constricted as his lungs struggled to take in air. 

It was him. A concrete figure sporting his face and his body and his smile. Izuku’s eyes fell on the metal plaque bolted to the stone base that supported the statue. 

In honor of Izuku Midoriya
A son, friend, and to many, the greatest hero
His perseverance brought peace to Japan

His lungs failed to function entirely, and he choked for breath while his mind swirled with disbelief and shock. 

This was most definitely a different world. A world where he’d died. 

A similar question from earlier formed in his mind: how?

Before his mind could fully explore all the implications his death would have on his family and friends and city, a comment on his appearance caught his attention. The social interaction shouldn’t’ve been staggering, seeing as the memorial was placed in the center of a bustling plaza, but it still took a second for his brain to interpret the words. 

“Hey, neat cosplay! It’s a tad late, you know, been a few months since Deku’s death, but still!” the smiling passerby exclaimed, eyes running over him. “You got the hair and face down, even the freckles are perfect! Heck, you even got his fashion sense right, super plain and boring.”

While they laughed, Izuku looked down at his outfit. Old sweatpants and a jacket he’d nabbed from some garbage bags on the side of the road. Someone must’ve sorted through their closet, and since the clothes would’ve been put to waste anyway, stealing them was acceptable. 

“U-um, thanks?” Izuku started unsurely. It’d been a few months since he’d held a conversation with a real person. And in this world, had he really been dead so long people couldn’t even recognize him?

The stranger tsked. “Now, there’s a big flaw. You’ve got his attitude all wrong! Deku was always super positive. Smiling and brightening people’s day, doing anything he could to make everyone’s lives happier! You haven’t smiled once! Just acting all gloomy and depressed, like yeah I know his death sucks for everyone, but he wouldn’t want us feeling that way!”

“Oh, well, sorry,” Izuku replied, rubbing the back of his neck. He felt kind of stupid apologizing for not acting like himself. 

“Ah, Deku would apologize way too much, you’ve got that right,” they laughed again. “But he was still way more confident than you, never showed an ounce of fear.”

“How do you know he wasn’t just hiding his fear, to help others feel better?” Izuku questioned. 

“Fair point. Doesn’t change the fact Deku would never look all dead inside like you do right now. You don’t have the same light of hope in your eyes he did.”

…had he really changed that much in the time he’d spent alone? He knew isolation was destructive, but he didn’t even resemble his living self enough to be recognized?

Izuku also thought this person was taking cosplay much too far. How could one imitate light in their eyes!? Instead of voicing this, he chose an ‘end of conversation’ line. 

“Alright, thanks for the advice.”

The stranger nodded and grinned. “Happy to help!”

Izuku sighed in relief once they were gone. All these people were stressing him out, after not being around anyone for such an extended period of time. He began walking down a more tranquil street to clear his head. 

From what he’d gathered so far, this world was no different from his previous one. All of 1-A were still heroes, and all the League members were locked up in Tartarus. The only distinctions he’d found were one: the world hadn’t ended with nuclear fallout. And two: he was dead. 

A small envy crawled its way into his heart. He could technically just replace the Izuku who’d died, and no one would know the difference. Although that’d be stealing another person’s friends and family and life. This world’s Izuku was dead, but did that make it right to claim everything he’d held precious as his own?

Izuku’s severe craving for love and support told him, yes, it was necessary. After suffering in desolation for so long, it was only deserved. 

But some morally upright part of his heart whispered how wrong it was. 

He gripped the keychain in his pocket, and he thought of everything he could have back. Everything he could steal back. The tinkering of a store bell across the street provided a welcome relief from his tormenting thoughts. 

Who he saw halted his train of thought entirely. 

It was Ochako. His eyes were finally refreshed, reminded of what she looked like. He hadn’t seen her beautiful face or figure for months, only relying on the fading pictures in his memory. His breath hitched when he saw his mouthguard around her neck. 

She was with the other girls, getting ice cream, it seemed. They were smiling and laughing, enjoying the conversation. A simple, pleasant outing. 

He felt the overwhelming desire to talk to her. 

Izuku quickly corrected himself. This was not his Ochako. His Ochako was dead. The woman he was staring at, she’d never felt love towards him, only his doppelganger. She wasn’t for him to care for. 

This correction did nothing to stop the hunger in his heart. 

As he watched her longer (not creepy at all) he noticed some minute differences. Her auburn eyes, they weren’t as warm as he remembered. They’d grown colder, more distant, and her smile was smaller too. Her eyes didn’t crinkle when she grinned. 

She was sadder. 

His death must’ve impacted her massively, to be able to take the optimism out of her life. 

The distance widened between the girls and Izuku, who decided to control his emotional impulses and gather more information first. He still barely knew anything about the history of this new place he was in, or how he even got teleported there in the first place. 

As he continued his walk, he yanked his hood over his head. He passed a building with a large TV splayed across the front, where a few people from the steady stream of walkers paused to ingest the daily synopsis of world events. 

“Shopping Malls Experience a Boom in Business as Summer Hits its Peak”

The news headline rang a vague bell in the back of his mind, making the words eerily familiar. He moved along quickly, having other matters to devote his thoughts to. 

He soon found one of those matters was food. 

His stomach growled, a rumbling that would’ve caught the attention of anyone standing near him. Thankfully, no one was close. His eyes scanned the surroundings, searching for some means of food, and he found a couple possibilities. 

He chose the closest option, which was a small fast-food shop that prided itself in its burgers. He’d been eating canned foods for months, so even the garbage that fast-food was caused his mouth to water. 

It was only after choosing the cheapest meal, when he was halfway through the line, he realized he didn’t have any money. He pointlessly felt around in his pockets, and his stomach rumbling told him he couldn’t go unfed, but then he’d have to resort to stealing. There was no chance he’d ever do that, considering how he always placed the wants of others over his own needs. 

So, he resorted to hanging his head and stepping out of line. He’d have to find some other way to sustain himsel-

“Hey man, noticed you feeling around your pockets. If money’s the problem, my buddy and I here can pay for you!”

This bright voice was accompanied by a hand on his shoulder. The touch zinged through Izuku’s body like the ringing of a note after plucking a guitar string. He hadn’t experienced actual physical touch from another person in so long, the sensation made him flinch. 

The hand’s weight on his shoulder was quickly alleviated, and a new, more animated voice spoke. 

“Woah hey dude, you good?”

Those voices… Izuku slowly panned his eyes over to the person who’d touched him, and shock spiked his heart. The effect only increased when he realized the person’s ‘buddy.’

Kirishima and Kaminari. 

He hadn’t even recognized their voices. 

Only by their faces did he know who they were, faces that were scrunched up in confusion and concern. His heart thumped when he realized they were awaiting an answer. 

Crap, I have to talk!

Stranding words together only gets harder after intense isolation, who knew?

“U-um, hey yeah, I’m good!” he reassured, even though his voice was shaking. “And uh, n-no, you don’t have to pay for me. I’ll figure something out.”

Their easy-going smiles broke through their confused frowns. Huh, their smiles also seemed diminished in size. 

Before he had the chance to ponder it further, Kaminari had his arm wrapped around Izuku, who tensed up. “Don’t worry about it dude! We’ll pay for ya! If you refuse, I might have to arrest you, because skipping out on these burgers is a crime.”

That managed to get a chuckle out of Izuku’s throat. Kaminari had always loved burgers. 

“Yeah seriously, our agencies are pretty successful, so helping out a guy like you is the least we can do!” Kirishima added. 

Well, this could either be very good or terribly bad, depending how he looked at it. 

Izuku also realized, neither of them recognized him. Maybe it was the shading of the hood over his face, and the concealment of his green curls, or perhaps it had just been so much time, their memories had faded. 

Kaminari guided him back into the line, and Kirishima asked him what he wanted. He still chose the cheapest meal, something he managed to communicate properly if the redhead’s nod was anything to go by. 

Thankfully, a few customers recognized the heroes, Red Riot and Chargebolt, even though they weren’t in costume. The citizens walked up to them with star-struck faces, asking for an autograph. 

Kirishima and Kaminari handled these interactions much smoother than Izuku had ever done. Those two were extroverts, and they easily sparked conversation with their fans as they signed their items. Izuku always stuttered a bit and flushed in embarrassment first, before finally getting to the conversation part. 

Still, it was a good feeling, having people who looked up to him and trusted him to keep them safe. Another feeling he hadn’t experienced in a while. 

The shrieking of a kid giggling snapped his thoughts back to the present. 

“Oh! Oh! Can you shock me too!?” another kid begged of Kaminari. 

“Ah, kiddo, I would! But our food’s ready! Wouldn’t wanna keep my buddies here waiting,” the blond replied. 

“Aw…” the girl turned away dismally, only for Kaminari to tap her on the shoulder with a little electrical jolt. She yelped, much like the first kid, causing Kaminari to descend into laughter. She soon followed him, giggling loudly. 

Izuku smiled. Maybe it was some part of his lower-processing mind, but Kaminari had always done great with kids. 

However, their food was actually ready, and the blond soon joined Izuku and Kirishima at one of the small tables and plopped down into an uncomfortable chair. 

Izuku’s plan was simple. Eat the food. Escape the social interaction. 

He didn’t want his friends- no, they weren’t his friends. His friends were gone. He didn’t want these people to recognize him. That would lead to a lot of questions he couldn’t answer, and it’d be stealing a friendship that belonged to a dead mean. 

Besides, the conversation he’d had so far had already produced a headache. He needed to ease back into talking to people, but this conversation had slammed into him like a brick wall. 

And it was only about to get worse. 

“So, what brought you here to this fine restaurant?” Kaminari questioned through a mouthful of burger. 

“Uhm…” Izuku desperately searched for a story. “I j-just recently moved here and wanted to see if there were any g-good food joints around, but I forgot my wallet, so uh, thanks for saving me, I g-guess!”

He was a terrible liar. But these two were too trusting to tell. 

“No problem man!” Kirishima smiled. Again, not as bright as Izuku remembered. 

“Well, you most definitely have chosen the best food joint around!” Kaminari exclaimed. “Their burgers are top notch and trust me I have scoured every single place that sells them. This is the place to be!”

Izuku already knew this, of course. Kaminari had been raving about this place for months, before- well, everything. 

“Thanks, I’ll be sure to come back sometime,” Izuku promised, choosing to keep his story. “You two are some of the local heroes, right? Red Riot and Chargebolt?”

“Yeah man!” Kirishima answered. “You can count on us if you ever need any help!”

“Even if that help is just making sure you can afford these amazing burgers.”

Izuku gave them a small smile. “Thanks.”

Crap, he’d completely forgotten about his plan. He hadn’t even started eating yet!

He sunk his teeth into his burger, and even though it was the cheapest one on the menu, it still felt like paradise against his taste buds. Kaminari wasn’t lying. Or that was just his mouth being accustomed to canned foods for months. 

Of course, Kaminari had to be tactless and ask a question while he was chewing. “So, why’d you want to move to Musutafu?”

Izuku struggled to finish chewing as fast as he could and almost choked on his food as he swallowed. “Oh, um,” he cleared his throat, “I uh, grew up here and just thought it’d be nice to come back, you know?”

Not technically a lie. 

Kaminari nodded instead of responding, his own mouth now full, but Kirishima laughed half-heartedly. 

“That’s a little weird to hear now-a-days, since a lot of people moved away after Deku’s death. The city just didn’t feel as safe as it did before. And going by the uptick in crime, it’s not just a feeling, either.”

Izuku’s eyes widened slightly at this news, while the other two at the table frowned drearily. He fidgeted a little with a spare piece of lettuce sticking out of his food as he searched for a response. 

“Yeah, I heard about his death a lot later than everyone else. Came as a big surprise.”

“Surprising, yes. Depressing? Also yes,” Kaminari murmured, a feebly fake smile on his face. “And us two were in his class at UA, didja know that?”

This conversation was becoming increasingly uncomfortable, and Izuku barely stopped himself from saying ‘yes.’ “No, I didn’t. Must’ve been even more difficult for you guys, then. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, man,” Kirishima said, his previous toothy grin almost completely watered down. 

The conversation had dipped low, taking the heroes’ moods with it. Their friend’s death had ripped away such an essential and joyful part of their lives, and it left them feeling a little more empty and a little less safe. They had recovered, healed for the most part. But being reminded like this only served to drag them back down, grief singing its usually silent song in their minds. 

Seeing them sad and down like that, it pained Izuku. 

Because, whether he accepted it or not, these people were his friends. 

It tore into him to see their hearts so heavy, especially when the person needed to silence that mournful song was right in front of them. 

Especially when he could do something about it. 

“Deku would only be upset at how you’re feeling right now.”

His voice was firm and resolute, mirroring his lost confidence. Kirishima and Kaminari glanced up at him, surprise overtaking their previous solemn expressions. 

“Yeah, I know, it sucks that he’s gone. But it’s not like what he’d want for us is gone. He wouldn’t want you hanging your heads at the mention of him, or letting sadness take over at his memory. I think… I think he’d want you to look back fondly at the time you spent together. Smiling at what you had, not frowning at what you’ve lost.”

He gave them a small, sure smile. 

“So keep your head up.”

The two blinked at him in resounding surprise, words bouncing around in their heads, before finally landing and sinking in. 

Kirishima smiled, something a little more real than his previous grins. “Thanks man, that’s… actually the exact thing I’ve needed to hear.”

“You got that right,” Kaminari agreed, rubbing the back of his neck. 

“You know, you kinda remind me of him. Deku, I mean,” the redhead realized. 

All of Izuku’s fleeting confidence whisked off in an instant as the conversation reached new levels of uncomfortableness. 

“Oh, r-really!? I’ve never b-been told that before, hah…”

“Nah, you’ve got it wrong, dude,” Kaminari directed his words at Kirishima. “He hasn’t got the confidence. Ack, no offense!” the blond quickly added in apology. 

Izuku waved his hands in front of him and shook his head. “No, no it’s okay. I’m uh, I’m working on it.”

A yawn floated out of Eri’s throat, and she quickly stifled it. It was too late in the day to be yawning, even if she’d been patrolling all night. 

Her morning had been full of blissful sleep, but once the afternoon hit, she figured she needed to get up to avoid messing up her already ruined sleep schedule. 

Then she’d remembered she forgot her costume at Shinso’s agency. Probably in the thrill of stealing his coffee. 

So now here she was, walking through town, back to retrieve her hero costume. Not that she was complaining. It was a nice day, maybe a tad hot because of the lack of clouds to block out the sun. She had hoped to get some training in with Kota, but he’d been acting weird anywa-

Eri stumbled to the side as someone knocked into her, and she quickly caught herself before gravity had the chance to drag her down. 

She frowned slightly as she turned to look for who’d bumped into her. 

“Ack, I’m sorry! I didn’t see you, are you okay?”

That voice… it rang a vague bell in the back of her mind. It belonged to a well-built man who’d just exited a fast-food shop behind him. He wore a hood, and with the sun shining strongly above them, it cast a heavy shadow over his face. 

But she could just make out his eyes, and it felt like she’d peered into them before. 

Eri thought she heard him gasp lightly and narrowed her eyes in scrutinization. 

“Yeah, I’m good,” she answered, and he immediately started backing away. 

“Well, that’s nice to hear, and sorry again,” he said hurriedly, before striding away and keeping his head low. 

Eri’s eyes narrowed further as she remained standing there on the sidewalk. He was so familiar, too familiar. Her irritation grew the longer she couldn’t put a finger on it. Or figure out why a strange hope had washed over her at his tone. 

So she did the only thing any reasonable teenager would do. 

She stalked him. 

Shinso had taught her a great many things about stealth. Despite her light gray-blue hair, she could fade into the shadows easily and keep her footsteps as light as a mouse’s. She considered stalking this man extra practice!

As Eri followed the stranger, she realized he didn’t have any particular destination. He was taking turns at random, walking for no reason at all. Or at least that was the case for the first fifteen minutes. After that, he paused for a minute, Eri holding her breath around the corner, before making a sharp turn and walking with much more purpose than before. 

Eri quickly recognized he was heading towards Takoba beach.

When he arrived, his footsteps faltered as the heaping mounds of trash came into view. The man stopped at the railing and clenched it, surveying the littered sand. Eri thought this was quite peculiar behavior. 

She’d never been to the beach, but All Might had been having some strange mutterings about it lately, ever since Deku’s passing. 

Her attention snapped back to the man as he raised his hands to his hood and lowered it. The action revealed a mass of wild curls, deep green in color. 

Her lungs froze, her breath suspended as air stopped flowing. 

She’d only ever met one person who had crazy hair like that. The voice from earlier suddenly connected itself to its owner, and she realized why he seemed so familiar. 

Her eyes widened as she processed this, and that feeling of hope swept over her again. The same hope she’d experienced when he’d first rescued her. 

“Deku?”

Izuku froze. Every muscle in his body went stiff; he recognized that voice from before. 

He swore internally. 

His head creaked as he turned to see who’d called him, making plans to run as quickly as possible. 

Eri’s big eyes full of hope and tears dismissed all those plans. His chest tightened as he realized he wouldn’t be able to leave under such a soulful gaze. He felt the urge to comfort her, to alleviate any pain she felt, even though…

She’s not the Eri I rescued. I’ve never met this girl before. 

“Deku, is that you?” The crack in her voice made him forget all that, and it forced him to answer. 

“Yeah, yeah it’s me.”

A range of emotions swarmed across her expression as her eyes widened further. Surprise, confusion, relief, but most of all, an overwhelming joy. 

The girl charged forward, tears streaming from her eyes, and she slammed into Izuku, hugging him. Even with One For All, he doubted he’d be able to get her arms unwrapped from around him. 

His shirt was soon damp, and because he also had a very low threshold for crying, his eyes were also glistening. 

She just sobbed into him for a good few minutes, releasing all the sorrow and dejection she’d kept hidden under her smile. Izuku smiled, his tears ones of happiness, after not having seen Eri in so long. All fear of discovery was pushed out of his mind by the sincereness of her hug, and he made sure she felt safe in his arms, just like the first time they’d met. 

Once her eyes were sufficiently red and puffy, she looked up at him and asked, “But how? You died! I…” her voice cracked again, “I went to your funeral.”

His smile shrank a little. “I guess- well, you see… uh,” he stumbled over his words. “I… I’m not your Deku.”

She tilted her head in confusion. “You mean, like, you’re-” her eyes snapped open. “You’re from the multiverse!?”

Eri sprang away from him, arms raised to a defensive position. 

“How do I know you’re not some alternate version of Deku!? Like some psychopath villain who wears a suit and kills people?!”

Izuku frowned, trying to fathom how he could’ve ever become a villain. And he’d never wear a suit! He’d probably wear a jacket that said ‘villain costume’ on it, or something like that. 

“Uhm, I’m not a villain-”

“Thanks exactly what a villain would say!”

“Then what would a non-villain say?!”

Her face scrunched up in thought. “I dunno… I guess, just, what’re you like where you’re from!?”

His voice became more laden with sadness. “Well, I was the number one hero, used to date Ochako, did a lot of analysis and was a huge fanboy, but in the end, all I measured up to be was a failure.”

Eri looked at him confusedly. “What do you mean ‘was’ and ‘used to’? And there’s no way you could ever be a failure! What happened?”

Izuku diverted his eyes and spoke lowly. “Where I’m from, everyone’s dead. I’m the only person left alive.”

Eri’s mouth fell open and her arms slackened, dropping to their usual position. Her face crumpled as she realized just how much the Izuku standing before her had gone through. She knew losing one person was hard enough, but everyone?

She didn’t think she could survive that. As she peered closer at Izuku, she noticed the mournful shadow in his eyes, and the dark bags under them. He had barely managed to survive. 

“That’s… terrible,” was all she could manage. “I can only imagine, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, it wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”

Eri could swear she felt her heart shudder at the amount of guilt and shame in that last word. 

“Well,” she started hesitantly, “You’re here now, aren’t you? That means you can have everyone back! And we can have you back!”

He shook his head. “I don’t think that’s right. All those relationships and all that happiness, they don’t belong to me. It’d feel like stealing, taking someone’s life. I don’t think I could live with that icky feeling inside.”

“So you don’t think you should be talking to me right now…” Eri realized faintly. 

Izuku gave a firm nod. “Whether you want to accept it or not, we don’t know each other, and I don’t think we should.”

She inhaled sharply, eyes widening in worry. Then she frowned in thought and looked to the ground as her mind whirred for a response. 

“Well… whether you want to accept it or not, you make people happy! You make people feel safe!” she burst out heatedly. “Yeah yeah, you don’t think it’s right to take over a dead man’s life, but there’s so many people whose lives would be so much brighter if you were a part of them! Regardless if you’re actually our Deku or not!”

Izuku took a step back in surprise at her angry outburst, while she clenched her fists, eyes welling up again. 

“Don’t you see?! There’s so much pain and suffering you could heal if you just return to people’s lives! Don’t you understand how much people need you? How happy you make them?” Eri questioned fervently. “Not to mention your own grief! You’ve been broken even more, but that can be fixed now!”

Izuku’s brow furrowed. “I’m not deserving of being fixed, after letting everyone down. I don’t want to be selfish.”

“It’s not selfish!” she exclaimed. “You’d be helping other people! You’d get to save them again, be a hero! Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? To be a hero?”

His eyes opened slightly. “Yes, that is what I want.”

“Then think of all the people you’d be forcing to live in mourning or danger, because of your absence. Just because you’re not from this world, just because you're not our Deku, it doesn’t mean you can’t make us happy or keep us safe.”

Izuku considered her carefully and heard the overwhelming conviction in her voice. She wanted him back so badly… and other people must feel the same too. Especially Ochako. 

Maybe forming bonds with them wasn’t selfish. It was actually helping them, so then wouldn’t it be selfish to leave them all alone?

Even as the pieces clicked in his mind, he still felt unsure. 

So his response was conservative. “I’ll think about it.”

Eri groaned loudly. “I guess you’re always stubborn, no matter what world you come from.”

Izuku laughed feebly and rubbed the back of his neck. Eri walked forward and grabbed his arm, catching his attention, and looked him in the eye with an unwavering confidence. 

“Even if you are unsure about becoming a part of all these people’s lives again, there’s still one person you can’t deny a visit.”

“MY BABY IZUKUUUUU!!!”

Izuku’s mother, despite being frailer in her old age, flew into Izuku and gave him a bone-crushing hug. 

He was barely able to speak with his lungs being squeezed, “Hi… Mom…”

Eri just stood by and laughed, amused at Inko’s reaction and warmed by such strong motherly love. 

When Inko finally relinquished him, she led him into the living room and forced him onto the couch, not asking questions. Motherly duties came first. 

She started cooking in the kitchen, working diligently, actions never straying from the task at hand. Internally, she was overflowing with confusion and questions, but taking care of her boy was more important. The result of such loyal work? Some of the best Katsudon Izuku had ever tasted. 

Again, that might’ve just been his taste buds being worn out by canned foods, but it was still delicious. 

Once he and Eri were finished, Inko spoke the racing thoughts in her mind. 

“How did you get here? I thought you died? How did you survive, and why haven’t you shown yourself until now? Have you been alright? You didn’t shatter all your bones again, did you?”

She fired question after question, and Izuku had to wave his hands frantically in front of him to get her to stop. 

“Mom,” he took a hold of her hands, and she looked at him expectantly. “I’m not your Izuku. You see, I’m from a different world. A world… where everyone died. Including you.” His voice cracked. 

“Oh Izuku…” she raised a hand to his cheek, new tears sprouting. After everything she’d watched her son experience, that wasn’t too hard to believe. 

“I don’t quite know how I ended up here, but… but it means I get to see you again, right?” He tried at a smile, but his lips trembled and fell, all the sorrow he’d experienced coursing through his mind. 

Inko buried herself into his shoulder. “It’s okay, Izuku. Whether you’re my baby boy or not, I’m still gonna be here for you whenever you need it.”

He hugged her tightly. “Thanks Mom.”

His shoulder was already damp from her tears, and his eyes were watering too. By the time they were done hugging, the apartment below was complaining of a leakage.

At some point, somebody turned the TV on as the three of them chatted, sharing their grief and their trials. Sometimes, simply communicating your stressors to others is enough to alleviate them. 

However, some stressors are bigger than that. 

A news story dragged Izuku’s attention away from his mother and Eri. It was about a recent large-scale villain attack; an organization had staged a bombing. 

A bombing. 

Izuku’s chest constricted as a nauseous fear swelled in his stomach. A bombing at a mall, a large shopping mall, and hundreds died. Hundreds. 

Just like the first time. 

Different puzzle pieces started clicking in his mind. The reason that broadcast about malls booming in the summer had been so eerily familiar was because he’d seen it before. And now the bombing, that exact attack had happened in his own world, two-

He sucked in a rigid breath. 

Two months before the nuclear missiles were fired. 

He’d been through these motions. He’d experienced this before. 

His world was months ahead of this one. 

This dimension was on the same path to destruction.

Chapter Text

Izuku’s stomach lurched as the Katsudon his mother had made rose up as bile in his throat, then spilled out of his mouth into the toilet. 

He wiped his sweating forehead, while his stomach kept churning and twisting. He wasn’t only reacting to the news negatively in a mental way, but in a physical way, too. 

This world was going to fall down the same pit of destruction his own world had fallen into. Nobody was safe. Just because they were all alive again didn’t mean they were going to stay that way. 

Nothing had changed. 

“Hey, Deku, are you alright?” Eri called from outside the bathroom door. 

He didn’t respond, in case his stomach decided to dispel more vomit while he spoke. She took his silence as a no. 

“I don’t know why you just got so upset,” she admitted. “Yeah, that bombing was terrible, but I’ve never seen you react this badly to anything. Whatever it means, there are still people who need your help, so please be okay.”

Her words caused something to click in his head. 

There were still people to help, they hadn’t died yet. Something had changed. Because of what he knew of this organization from his own world, he actually had a chance at saving everyone this time!

Izuku gasped, the hope of a realization quelling the pool of nausea. 

He had the chance to fix his mistake. 

Everyone he’d failed, he could make up for it now! By saving this world!

“Damn right you can.”

Izuku turned to see Third, not that he hadn’t already felt his presence. 

The vestige wore a perpetually fierce expression, with his arms crossed. “You’ve got to act fast. Strike them right away, unrelenting. It’s the only way this’ll work.”

Izuku wasn’t surprised this was how Third, as well as Second, preferred to act. With the constantly dangerous environment they’d lived in, rebelling against All For One, it’d make sense they’d attack first, think later. 

But in this scenario, only having two months until doom, Izuku agreed with them. 

“Yeah, I’ll get right on it,” he replied nodding. Third let out a grunt of approval, before dissipating. 

Izuku recalled every move the organization made after bombing the mall, thinking through in his head what preventive measures could be taken to halt their plans before they got running at full speed. 

Of course, everything he thought of, he wanted to do by himself. Without help. 

When he exited the bathroom, he beelined it for the door. Eri didn’t let him get that far, though. 

“Woah, where are you going!?” she exclaimed, grabbing onto his shirt. 

He gave her a smile that didn’t crinkle his eyes and gently removed her hand from his clothing. “I’ve got to go fix some things.”

The unicorn frowned, pleading with her eyes for him to stay. That was almost enough to get him to stay. Almost. 

He continued to the door. 

“Izuku, what are you doing?” his mother asked worriedly. 

“Don’t worry, Mom, it’ll be okay,” he promised, trying to ignore the way their concerned expressions nagged at him to stay. “I’m just gonna go take care of some things that need fixing, and then I’ll be back.”

He phrased it in a way that made it sound like he’d be back soon, when in reality, he knew he wouldn’t be. 

“Okay, well, take care of yourself,” Inko requested, and Izuku nodded kindly. 

As he was about to close the door behind him, one last beg came from Eri. 

“Please don’t leave. We just got you back.”

Izuku grimaced at the pain he was causing her. “Sorry… but if I don’t do this, if I fail again, I don’t think I’ll be able to live with myself.”

A day later…

Izuku used Blackwhip to fling himself away from the bank, Smokescreen covering up his trail. He didn’t want the whole world knowing of his returned existence yet. 

The members of the organization were neatly tied up and detained, easy for the police to handle. This had been the first thing they’d done in Izuku’s world after blowing up the mall: robbed a bank for funds. 

Later, they’d used those funds to bribe certain people into aligning their mindset with their cause. But now, in this world, they wouldn’t have the chance to do that. 

Izuku smiled faintly, desperately, as he swung through the air. He hoped what he was doing was enough. His next stop was the head of the police department’s house, and he’d have to wait until night. 

Knowing every move they’d make in the next two months, he now had eight weeks to stop this dimension from reaching the same deathly conclusion as his. 

Once he arrived at the police’s house, he hid in the rustling leaves of a tree and rested. It had been a while since he’d exerted himself so much, and his muscles were groaning at the high usage of One For All. 

“Hey kid,” Nana greeted as she slipped into his consciousness. “The way you’re so determined to save this world is pretty cool.” Her eyes sharpened. “But the way you’re ignoring everyone you care about isn’t cool at all.”

Izuku sighed, turning his eyes to the dappled sunlight filtering in through the trees. “I’m trying to keep all of them safe. I can do that better by myself.”

She frowned. “Are you sure you’re not just thinking that because you’ve gotten so used to isolation?”

He hesitated, before nodding. “Yes. I’m sure. I’ll… I’ll figure out how I’m going to interact with them all later.”

Nana could hear the fatigue in his tone. He wasn’t only tired physically, but his mind was weary from worry too. 

“Alright, just remember, people are not weaknesses, and it’s wrong of you to exclude them for long.”

His expression hardened slightly, but he gave a stiff nod, and she faded away. 

Darkness swiftly overtook the sky, stars popping out as the light of the sun faded. Sure enough, once shadow covered everything, Izuku observed a small band of people dressed in black advancing upon the chief of the police’s house. 

He streaked down from the tree and took them out quickly and silently. None of them had quirks suited for fighting, but rather infiltration. Up against the former number one? They were down in less than a minute. 

Izuku did, however, remember to hold back this time, and he avoided giving them any serious injuries. But he still stuck out like a shooting star in a black sky because of the lighting aura generated by his quirk, so it didn’t surprise him to see a policeman charging out of his door to greet who he thought were robbers. 

Izuku flashed away before the head of the department even saw him. More law enforcement officers arrived minutes later, but Izuku wasn’t there to observe them, already headed to another destination. 

In a few weeks, a laboratory would be robbed, and its supplies used to make more bombs. Izuku wanted to put some extra fortifications in place to hopefully stop any future infiltration from occurring. 

He was so focused on preventing his failure, he didn’t pause to think of what he’d do if he succeeded. What his life would be after that. Or who his life would be with. 

Ochako rubbed her hands down her face in a mixture of confusion and stress, trying to ignore the flurry of questions the police were throwing at her. 

“I already told you!” she exclaimed. “When I arrived, these five people were unconscious in front of the house, as if they’d already been attacked and immobilized. I don’t know who or how; that’s all I know.”

The officers backed off a little at her firm tone, and she sighed in relief. 

“Don’t worry, Uravity, I’ll take it from here,” a familiar voice called. 

Ochako smiled gratefully. “Thank you, Detective.”

Tsukauchi nodded at her, giving her a reassuring grin. He moved on to ask the officers who’d been firing questions at her what information they had gathered, giving her the chance to escape. 

She slipped away from the scene and began heading back to her agency, jumping over the rooftops. She observed the light speckled sky above her, as she tried to make sense of what had just happened. 

Both incidents had already ended by the time she arrived. 

At the bank, the robbers were detained and dragged off for questioning, and she hadn’t even lifted a finger. Or lowered a finger to activate her quirk, in her case. 

And then this infiltration of the head of the police’s house. All the offenders were limp on the ground when she got there! How?

Vigilantes had experienced a slight spike in frequency after Izuku’s death, but they typically weren’t that high quality of fighters. Granted, the people taken out weren’t fighters either, it was still odd how there appeared to be little to no struggle at all. 

Besides, how would someone even have known that band of people would be attempting to break in?

It didn’t add up, and Ochako felt she was missing a large piece of the puzzle. 

But it was the end of the day, and her headache was enough to convince her to get some sleep, so she decided to leave it to Tsukauchi to figure out. 

Her sleep that night was restless. 

“Bank Robbed, Connection to Bombing Plausible.”

Izuku’s body went rigid at the news headline, his steps into the beachside resort halting. It wasn’t possible. That hadn’t happened in his world. 

Had the timelines between the different dimensions changed?

Seeing as this world’s Izuku was dead, it was possible. 

That threw so many new variables into the equation, Izuku’s brain exploded with stress and anxieties. It wasn’t going to be as simple to fix his mistake as he thought. 

He turned his eyes and attention back to the resort in front of him. This place had been bombed two weeks after the first attack at the mall, so in about week, it should be bombed in this dimension too. 

Unless things had changed, which he hoped they hadn’t. 

Eri and his mom had called him numerous times throughout the week. He sometimes answered. Most times he didn’t, which always provoked a small pang of guilt. The times he did answer only led to short, curt conversations. 

Izuku was a stubborn individual, so when he got his mind set on something, he refused to be distracted. That included pushing away not only the people who wanted to help him, but the vestiges too. 

Such guilt-tinged thoughts filled his thick skull as he snuck down to the drainage section of the resort that nobody hung around. The bombers had infiltrated through the sewage system, so if he could block that method of entrance now…

He only hoped it would be enough. Because so far, his efforts had been in vain. 

“What’s happening?” a woman with long, tumbling black hair demanded. She glared around at her subordinates, fierce golden eyes daring anyone to answer. “Both our operations were foiled, and we don’t even know who. Our biggest obstacle, the number one hero, was dealt with months ago! Why are we having issues!?”

One tentative teenager raised his hand, and she jerked her head at him, allowing him to speak. “Well, the last sounds we heard from their comms were single, blunt force attacks. So whoever it was is strong.”

The woman sighed, tapping her nails against the conference table. “We need to find out who it was and remove them. But for now, let’s continue to speed up operations. The second attempt at a bank robbery was a success, so let’s keep pushing forward.”

“What are you suggesting we do now?” an older, wiser-looking woman asked, pondering the situation closely. 

A glint of respect shone in the younger woman’s eyes. “We move the resort-bombing up a week. We need to get things rolling faster.”

“You are impatient, Koritsu,” the older woman continued. “Take time to carefully consider each step.”

Koritsu looked her sharply in the eye. “But Koryo, I have thought about this closely, and I think it’ll be best to speed things up.”

Koryo frowned slightly, eyes peering into the woman in front of her. After a moment, she gave in. “Alright, then. I trust your judgment is sound.”

Her eyes sparkled at the approval, before turning back to the teen. “Send out the regiment that’s been prepping for the resort bombing. I expect them to leave within an hour.”

The teen dipped his head and scurried off with her orders. 

They’d find more resistance than initially planned. 

Izuku looked at his makeshift barricade with satisfaction, which blocked the resort’s sewage tunnel from the rest of the city’s. It consisted of wooden crates, twisted metal rods, trash barrels, as well as any other garbage he’d been able to find around the area. 

It probably wouldn’t be able to hold them off forever, but it’d at least buy the security guards above enough time to create counter measures. 

Izuku leapt over the stream of putrid waste to the exit, and began to climb the ladder back out into fresh, clean air. 

It wasn’t like they’d be attacking for a week anyway, so maybe he also had time to drop hints to some of the officials without giving away his identity. 

That optimistic thought was completely dismissed when a tremendous boom vibrated against his ears. It came from the direction of his barricade, and he rushed back in that direction. 

The sight made his mind reel, the anguish of uncertainty just beginning its torment. 

The bombers were a week early, and to make it worse, they had already managed to blow a hole in his preventive measure. There were six of them, and they were all sprinting in the direction of the resort, each carrying a bulky backpack. Izuku could take a pretty accurate guess at what the bags held. 

Izuku clenched his jaw and lowered to a fighting stance. He couldn’t let these people get by, not unless he wanted to sentence hundreds of people to death. After putting his hood up and covering his face with a mask, he leapt at the closest person, who was at the front of the group. 

“Look out!” someone shouted just before his punch made contact. His hit still landed, but what surprised him was the person who shouted being able to see him at all. Normally people just saw a streak of light, before they were unconscious. 

He turned to see the person who’d shouted the warning. A woman, with faintly pink glowing eyes. 

Sight enhancement? Some type of superior perception?

She was closer to the back of the group, which was now down to five.

He flashed towards the next closest person, but he vanished from sight at the last split second, and Izuku took out the person behind them instead. He whipped around, and it turned out the person had teleported a foot to the right, just managing to dodge him. 

Izuku frowned. If he could teleport, why didn’t they just pop straight to their targeted destination? 

He didn’t have much time to ponder it though, because a tall woman pressed a button on her forearm. The backpack of the person Izuku had just taken out began to glow aggressively, and Danger Sense screamed the destructive potential of the bombs inside. 

He quickly grabbed the person and threw the backpack off of them, before springing away just in time. The shockwave of the explosion knocked him into the brick wall. 

Anger flared in his chest, and he shouted at the group of people, who were still running towards the resort. “You’d seriously sacrifice one of your own that easily!?”

They didn’t hear him though- no, couldn’t hear him. They had hastily tamped their ears with plugs, and the woman who’d set off the bombs made a motion to a younger masked teenager. 

The girl handed off her bag to the woman, who was the obvious leader of the group, and stopped to face Izuku. She took off her thick metal mask. 

“You won’t be able to stop us, whoever you are,” she said with more confidence than her age suggested. “We have an actual reason we’re doing this. This isn’t just some spur of the moment choice.”

Her words seemed to sway the air, as well as Izuku’s sense of equilibrium. The teen smiled at how he staggered to the side. 

Yet he still managed to get out a response. “You’re right, you do have a good reason for doing this. But there’s no reason that justifies killing people like this.”

“That’s just how you see it,” the teen continued. With every word, Izuku’s stomach churned, twisted a little more. “It’s not like you heroes even to listen to the villain’s side of the story anyway, so I won’t even try.” His head felt light enough to be blown around like a feather. “Why don’t you just pass out for me instead?”

A quirk that makes people nauseous and light-headed the more she speaks. 

He clenched his jaw, trying desperately to keep his feet under him, but the lull of her voice was tempting him just to accept the darkness trying to creep over his mind. 

“Quirks are all-important in this society. They determine everything you are, and we’re all sick of it. Oh, and you’re feeling pretty sick too, aren’t you?” 

Further down the sewage drain, Izuku saw the leader of the group attaching a bomb onto a support pillar. That would be enough to collapse the entire tunnel and bring down everything above them. The teen started backing away, knowing if she didn’t incapacitate him quick enough and escape, the tunnel would collapse on her too. 

This fear caused a short pause in her talking, in which Izuku leapt forward. 

The girl gasped in surprise. “No!!”

Sickness echoed through his body like a shockwave at her exclamation, so instead of kicking her like he intended, he rammed into her full force. This sent both of them flying, and they slid to a halt right next to the support pillar with the bomb attached. 

When it exploded. 

Izuku shielded the girl from the shooting rubble, before jumping up to the crumbling pillar and supporting it with his own strength. The weight of the ceiling and building above him pressed down on his shoulders, and he shouted in pain, a cuss dropping out of his mouth. 

The teen shook her head, regaining clarity, when she saw Izuku struggling before her. She stared with wide eyes for a couple seconds, before sprinting after the rest of her group. 

Standing there, being crushed under the weight of concrete and of failure, Izuku realized something very important. 

He couldn’t do this alone. 

He could feel the vestiges shouting ‘finally!’ from inside him. 

Izuku shifted the weight to one side of his body, which screamed in agony in response, and he wormed his phone out of his pocket and made a familiar text. 

When Shoto got calls he preferred to ignore them. After all, people had text nowadays, no reason to actually speak with audible words. 

But this one time, he wished it had been a call instead of a text. Because the text was from a dead man. And it was only his location. 

Midoriya had pulled this crap before. 

And last time, when Shoto arrived, he was already dead. 

Despite his hero name, Overcomer, he hadn’t yet overcome his friend’s death. His father’s name, Endeavor, meant trying to succeed. He didn’t just want to try. He wanted to prevail. He wanted to overcome, hence the name, Overcomer. 

Shoto was also just too oblivious to understand how awkward it was to shout ‘I need help, over here, Overcomer!’

And he’d already needed to overcome many difficulties in his life, like his hatred of his father, or having a villain like Dabi associated with him. But Midoriya’s death… that was different. 

And this mysterious text from him did not help. 

But he got a feeling it wasn’t something he could ignore. Even if it ended up being some cruel prank or an accident, this was something he needed to respond to. 

And it had been sent to the whole class. So more people other than him were bound to show up. 

Hitoshi leered over the villain, pulling his capture weapon tighter as she tried to squirm out of his grasp. They were in the courtyard in front of the resort building, so it wasn’t like she’d be able to get far. She flashed her pink eyes at him, and he raised his eyebrows. 

“That looks pretty neat and all, but it only helps you see better. Won’t do you much good in this situation. Why are you here, anyways?”

The woman glared at him and kept her lips tightly sealed. 

“Won’t answer? Fine by me. Hey Overcomer!” he called his former classmate, too tired to care how awkward it sounded. Todoroki was currently streaming a line of fire at a villain who kept teleporting a foot side to side, dodging. “I got one over here for you to freeze!”

“Got it,” Todoroki responded. Without taking his eyes off the teleporting villain, he sent a sheet of ice in the direction of Hitoshi’s voice, which soon encompassed the glowing-eyed villain. 

Hitoshi walked over to the leader of the group, a tall woman with a slight strength enhancement quirk. Or at least he guessed that was her quirk, going by the extra ice fortifying her encasement. 

“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?” he questioned. She lived up to his expectations and didn’t answer, so he switched to insults. “This was quite the pathetic attempt at an attack. Whatever you believe must mean literally nothing to you, for you to be taken down this easily.”

Her nostrils flared in aggravation, and her mouth twitched. 

“I hope whatever led you to launch this attack keeps happening, us heroes have to keep people like you down, after all.”

Hitoshi didn’t mean a word he was saying, but it got her to talk, so it was worth it. 

“You should be supporting us, with a quirk like yours!” she suddenly exclaimed. “Why are you fighting against people who understand you!?”

The hero frowned, slightly intrigued, before sighing. “No cause is worth killing people over. And besides, I just needed to hear your voice.”

The woman scoffed in anger and disappointment, before her eyes and expression went blank. 

Hitoshi adjusted his persona chords, and then jogged back over to where Todoroki was shooting fire at the teleporting villain. 

“Keep dodging, we can still do this, got it?!” he shouted, using the leader’s voice. 

“Understood!” the villain responded, only for his body to go still and his mind wiped of all activity. Todoroki promptly froze him. 

“Is that all of them?” he asked. 

His question was quickly answered when a teenage girl came climbing out of the manhole cover the others had emerged out of. Her mouth was hidden behind a thick metal mask, but her eyes widened in surprise. 

“Are you alright?” Hitoshi asked, still using the leader’s voice. 

The girl frowned, and a robotical “What?” came out of her mask. Hitoshi was still able to brainwash her, even with the mask filtering her voice. Todoroki then put her in an icy prison as well. 

“Let’s head down there to see if there’s anyone else,” Todoroki suggested, and Hitoshi nodded in agreement, keeping his persona chords set to the leader’s voice. 

The sunlight departed from them as they went down into the gloomy sewage line. There was enough light provided by the lamps along the wall, but Todoroki lit his hand as a torch so the shadows weren’t as thick. 

As they continued jogging, they soon came to realize the ground was trembling slightly, and there was a soft rumbling noise that grew louder the further they got. They quickly found out the tunnel was threatening to collapse. 

And the only reason the structure was still standing was because someone was holding a support beam up with their own strength. 

Green light flickered around the person’s figure as the jagged edges of the support beam dug into his back, and the two heroes narrowed their eyes at the familiarity. 

But questions would have to wait. 

“Help,” the person choked out through clenched teeth, sweat leaking through his casual clothing. 

Hitoshi lowered his persona chords as they ran up to the gradually failing support beam. “Is this something your ice can hold up?”

Todoroki gritted his teeth. “Only temporarily, but yes.” He directed his words at the stranger. “How much longer can you hold that?” 

“Not… much… longer,” he forced out, voice strained. 

Todoroki nodded in grim understanding, before placing his hand against the base of the column. Ice spread across the surface of the concrete, before branching out into the dirty water, creating a strong base of gleaming ice crystals. 

The ice then spiked upwards, on two pillars either side of the stranger, connecting the top of the support beam with the bottom. Todoroki then thickened these pillars of ice, and they reached all the way to the ceiling. 

“You can step down now,” Todoroki informed, keeping one hand on each pillar of ice, reinforcing them with his power. 

The stranger listened, and just as he removed himself from the beam, ice filled his place. While Todoroki worked at making the pillar as strong and integrous as possible, Hitoshi turned to the new person. 

“You must be pretty strong to be holding that up for so long. Are you a hero?” he inquired. 

The stranger visibly tensed. “I-I, uhm, yeah. I am- well, used to be a hero, yeah.”

Hitoshi narrowed his eyes, and the voice sounded strangely familiar. “You got a license?”

“Um…” he stewed in his thoughts for a moment, “I did, b-but I kinda left it… behind?”

The purple-haired hero sighed. “Listen, no one’s gonna get upset with you for stopping this tunnel from collapsing, but you need to be honest with me. Did you use your extremely overpowered quirk without a license?”

“I just lost it, but I do have one!”

“Why did you exclaim that like you just decided on a cover story?”

The person fidgeted nervously, and as Hitoshi scrutinized his face, most of which was covered by his hood and mask, he found that his eyes were familiar too. So it wasn’t just his voice or quirk. 

Like a cat, curiosity got the better of him. “Could you take off your mask and hood for me?”

The stranger turned tail and bolted. 

Izuku was panicking. Todoroki and Shinso were about to discover his identity, which was something he was not ready for. 

“I thought you finally admitted you needed help!” Daigoro shouted in his head. “Just tell them who you are!”

No! Izuku thought, knowing the vestiges could hear thoughts just as clearly as spoken words. This is a terrible place and time for that! I need to think it through first!

Daigoro huffed. “You and your stupid planning.”

Izuku knew he couldn’t use One For All to escape, because Shinso would most definitely recognize the lightning that surrounded him. So he ran normally, with the natural strength of his body, which already gave him above average speed. 

Shinso, however, because he didn’t have a quirk to boost his performance, had much more practice with running quickly. 

“Overcomer, stay and make sure the tunnel doesn’t collapse!” Shinso shouted over his shoulder, “I’ll get this guy!”

“Got it!” Todoroki was beginning to set up extra pillars of ice around the impaired support beam for extra safety, until an emergency construction team could arrive to repair it. 

It quickly dawned upon Izuku that Shinso was going to catch up to him. His body was aching and burning from the effort it had taken to keep the tunnel from collapsing, so the adrenaline and fear of discovery wasn’t enough to keep a distance between him and Shinso. 

He did manage to beat him to the manhole cover though, and his eyes stung as the sun abruptly entered his vision. 

He just needed to get out of sight for a moment, then he could zoom away before Shinso could reach him. So he turned to the resort building and sprinted to the doors, not even noticing the other people in the courtyard. 

Shinso sprang out of the ground a couple seconds later. 

“Hey Mockingjay!” Mina called, and Shinso spared her a glance. “Who was that?”

“Do you need our help?!” Kirishima asked. 

Kaminari nodded along with their questions. “Also, do you know why we got a text from Midoriya?”

“I don’t know to all three,” he responded quickly, before disappearing inside the building right after Izuku. 

The three heroes were left to blink confusedly, pausing their process of helping the police arrest the villains Shinso and Todoroki had defeated earlier. 

Izuku’s breathing had grown panicked, Shinso just behind him now. Danger Sense went off, and he just dodged a capture weapon being thrown in his direction. He gritted his teeth, knowing he’d have to use One For All to get away from him. 

But with each step, the guilt he felt about evading his friends grew. He could hear the vestiges discussing within his mind. 

“Should we distract him?” Nana suggested. “Make it so he trips, anything!”

“He would ignore us,” All Might said sadly. “When he’s like this, thinking that going it alone is the best path, there’s little one can do to change his mind.”

Daigoro huffed. “Or it’s just him being a mega introvert and not wanting to talk to anyone.”

Izuku shook his head, focusing on getting to the stairwell. Once he was there, he could use his quirk to jump all the way to the roof and escape that way. 

“You know…” Yoichi began ominously, a hint of mischievousness to his tone. “I don’t see what’s wrong with shutting off his power for a few minutes or so…”

Izuku’s breath hitched. The vestiges could do that!?

When he reached the stairs, he tried activating One For All, but no rush of power and strength came. Just his normal, human self. 

And Shinso right behind him. 

He could sense the vestiges cackling. 

He tore up the stairs as quick as he could without a quirk, and he reached the second floor, but Shinso had practically caught him. As a last desperate attempt, he opened the door to the second floor, which appeared to be filled with game rooms and mini theaters, hoping to find a place to hide. 

Shinso pinned him to the wall before that hope could continue, his elbow digging into Izuku’s shoulder. Izuku could’ve escaped the hold; he wasn’t helpless, but he wasn’t going to fight his friend either. 

Shinso ripped his mask off, looking for answers, but he only found more questions. The hero’s eyes, which were usually half closed from sleep depravity, went wide. 

“You- you’re…”

Izuku smiled nervously, noting how Shinso’s hold slackened and considering trying to run again. But he dismissed that thought when he saw the desperate hope in his friend’s eyes, the aching wish that what he was seeing was true. 

Rage soon clouded that wish. 

“Who are you!?” he shouted angrily. “Toga? Some other imposter!? Stop trying to bring life back to a man who’s dead!”

Well, crap.

Chapter Text

“Who are you!?” Shinso repeated his question, shoving Izuku harsher against the wall. “‘Cause I swear, if you’re Toga, this is not funny.”

His voice growled a low and dangerous threat, and Izuku quickly realized this was a question he couldn’t dodge. He was going to have to admit his identity, and the more he accepted that, the more relief he felt. 

“Answer me!!” Shinso shouted, and a small smile of defeat crept across Izuku’s face. 

His stubborn head still argued it would be better for him to continue fighting to protect the world on his own, but his heart and his situation shut down that argument. 

“I’m not Toga,” Izuku finally answered, “And I’m not some other person with a transformation quirk either.”

“Then who?” Shinso’s question was less angry this time, but more confused. 

“I-I, well, I’m…” Izuku struggled to find the right words, “I’m actually him. I’m Izuku Midoriya- well, not your Midoriya, but that is who I am.”

The puzzlement in the hero’s expression grew, accompanied by a flickering of hope, but disbelief quickly snuffed that light out. 

“You’re a liar,” he stated, just before Kaminari, Kirishima and Mina bumbled up the stairs to them. 

“Hey you got him!” Kaminari exclaimed happily, but the grin dropped off his face when he recognized just who he was looking at. Kirishima and Mina experienced a similar effect. 

“Did they say who they are?” Kirishima asked. The three heroes took either side of Shinso, so if the ‘villain’ tried to run, one of them would stop him. The position was second nature to them at this point. 

“He said he’s really Izuku Midoriya,” Shinso explained, his previous aggravation lingering in his tone. 

“Because I am!” Izuku exclaimed. “I’m not stealing his identity!”

Kaminari frowned. “But that’s exactly what someone who’s stealing his identity would say…”

“Yeah! What if you’re Toga!?” Mina added. 

“But- but I’m not!” Izuku repeated, having literally no idea how else to explain who he was. The four just frowned at him, squinting at the familiarity of his features. 

As he studied them in return, he realized a few major differences between them and the versions of them he’d known. He recognized the looming sadness in their eyes, and the deep wish that their friend was still alive. 

Seeing his face, and seeing it animated, not dead and pale, struck a chord in each of them. 

They so deeply wished for his company and friendship again, but believed that thread of connection was snapped forever, which caused the thought of someone impersonating him to sting that much more. 

Izuku felt the need to alleviate that pain, and in his own selfish desire, to reform that thread of connection. The aching in his chest reminded him just how much he wanted to be friends with the people before him. 

People who were alternate versions of his dead friends, and who knew him as a dead man. 

In the absurdness of it all, he laughed. 

The four heroes blinked at him surprisedly, and he laughed again. It was a sad, longing sound, but it came out of a mouth with a hopeful smile. 

“Sorry,” he apologized, blinking away tears, “It’s just so great to see you all again. It’s been a while.”

Izuku had successfully confused them out of their minds. It was clear this was an expression of real emotion, something an imposter couldn’t fabricate. 

That meant it truly could be Izuku. 

“Just- can you,” Shinso furrowed his brow and shook his head, “Can you start speaking sense!?” he demanded. 

Kaminari nodded sheepishly in agreement. “Yeah, I usually feel confused… but I feel even more confused than normal.”

Izuku laughed again, a sound that rang so true to the three heroes’ memories. Shinso’s hold slackened significantly. 

“I just called Tartarus.”

All five jumped at the new voice in the corner, where Todoroki was lowering a phone from his ear. 

“Toga is still in her cell,” Todoroki explained. 

“How long have you been standing there, man?” Kirishima questioned, and Todoroki simply shrugged. 

“So wait, if Toga is still in her cell…” Mina began connecting the dots, “That means this really could be…”

The air in the room seemed to still as they all realized at once. 

“I really am Izuku Midoriya,” Izuku voiced their singular thought. 

Shinso’s hold was so frail, Izuku easily pushed him away, but the heroes remained tense in case he chose to run again. He hadn’t fully convinced them yet. 

“...how can we know for sure?” Shinso asked. 

Izuku gasped and snapped his fingers as he figured out a way to prove it, before descending into a mumbling mess. 

“Kirishima, your quirk is Harden, but you typically only harden specific places at a time to keep your joints free to move. When you do harden your whole body, which is a super move you developed and used for the first time during the Shie Hassaikai raid, you’re super slow and immoble. You love crocs, and your favorite food is meat and your favorite color is red and your favorite hero is Crimson Riot, who you named yourself after…”

He continued splurting out all the details he could remember about his friends, one after another. This included Kaminari’s love for anything trendy, Mina’s cupio romanticism, Todoroki’s most out there conspiracy theories. Then it came to Shinso…

“Whenever people don’t respond to your questions, you either switch to insults or strike them in the diaphragm to brainwash them. Your favorite things are cats and coffee, and your favorite cat cafe is located at-”

Shinso covered Izuku’s mouth with his hand, silencing him. 

“You do not need to share anything more.”

Izuku gulped and nodded; only then did Shinso release him. 

“Oh right!” Izuku exclaimed, putting out his arm. He activated One For All in his extended forearm and sent out a single tendril of Blackwhip. “It’s also pretty hard to fake quirks, so this should be solid proof too.”

“Of course you only realize that after you spill all our personal details,” Mina pouted. 

“No, this is good,” Shinso interjected. “Now we know for sure… it’s really him.”

All their eyes landed on him, hope now far outweighing any doubt. But even as they took in his green eyes and freckled cheeks and wild curls, and recalled everything he’d just told them, they still found it difficult to accept the fact their friend was alive. 

But… he wasn’t quite the same. 

Kaminari raised his thumb and pointer finger to his face, squinting, “...you seem a little different.”

Izuku’s eyes widened slightly, and he diverted them. He recalled the words of a stranger. 

“You don’t have the same light of hope in your eyes he did.”

He dipped his head. “Yeah, I… I’m a little different.”

“How he’s similar to how we remember him is not important right now,” Shinso corrected, putting the conversation on a more logical track. “How are you not dead? We all went to your funeral, so how are you standing in front of us right now?”

“What if he faked his death…” Todoroki pondered. 

Izuku exhaled a breath of a laugh, smiling sheepishly. “Uh… no.”

“Fake bodies are expensive, but not impossible to afford,” the conspiracy theorist continued. “Especially for the number one hero. With your salary, faking your death would be quite easy.”

“I- wha- no.” Izuku sighed, quelling his confusion. “Todoroki, I didn’t fake my death,” he stated firmly. 

“Besides,” Mina cut in, “Have you seen what he spends his cash on? The bare essentials! This man has no style!”

“And he donates the rest,” Shinso added. “He wouldn’t waste his money on a cheap exit.”

Todoroki hummed in thought, and Izuku dreaded the next thing his turning cogs would churn out. 

“What if… he’s a twin.”

Shinso face palmed, while the rest blinked in confusion. 

“...I don’t think a twin could replicate his quirk,” Kirishima commented, and Izuku nodded in agreement. 

“Oh, right.”

Unfortunately, the theories didn’t stop there. Todoroki’s constantly questioning brain only turned out increasingly crazy ideas, and soon Kaminari and Mina were joining in just for heck of it. 

The possibility of him being a ghost, zombie, other undead creatures, called down from heaven, summoned from hell, were all brought up. Even the prospect that they were all hallucinating was mentioned. 

“Oh, oh!” Kaminari exclaimed. “I got it! What if… he’s a cyborg made by Mei!?”

Izuku held no power over the conversation at this point, so he hid in the background, cringing at the propositions. Shinso was actually gaining some amusement from the chaos, but he’d never admit it. 

“No no, I’ve a better one,” Mina declared, delight gleaming in her black eyes. “What if… he’s an alien!?”

“Ohh, good one!” Kaminari agreed. 

Todoroki frowned. “I find it more plausible he was abducted by aliens and returned, because an alien would not be able to mimic a quirk.”

“What if it was an alien who could steal quirks?” Kaminari proposed, having fun with Todoroki’s easily-swayed opinions. “After all, aliens would be way more advanced than us!” The theorist’s brow furrowed as he considered this new idea. 

“I’m not an alien!” Izuku interjected. “One hundred percent human! I don’t even know why I need to explain this…”

“Yeah guys,” Kirishima spoke up with a nervous smile, “I don’t think any of your theories are correct.”

Mina chuckled, “Okay okay, just one more. What if… he’s from an alternate dimension! You know like, multiverse travel?”

Kaminari wheezed. “You don’t actually believe in that stuff, do you? Nah, I ain’t buying it for a second.”

“There is more evidence supporting the existence of ghosts and aliens than the multiverse,” Todoroki agreed with Kaminari. 

“C’mon!” Mina snapped her fingers. “Guess that’s not it either!”

“Actually… that is it.”

All their heads creaked in Izuku’s direction, who immediately shriveled under the attention. 

“What do you mean, ‘that’s it’?” Shinso questioned, eyes narrowed. 

“I uh, I’m from another universe? Or dimension, whatever you want to call it,” Izuku elaborated. “It’s pretty much the same as here, except I didn’t die, and-”

“Well that sounds like a swell world then!” Mina interrupted. “Why did this place draw the short end of the stick, huh?”

“You might want to hear the rest before you say that,” Izuku answered ominously, his dark tone capturing their curiosity and waking their fear. “Everyone is dead, where I come from. Humanity is wiped out by nuclear weapons, there’s nothing. Nothing worth living for, or dying for, either.”

He looked up at their faces, and saw how in just a few short sentences, he’d completely enraptured their attention. When he spoke again, it was a serious and foreboding warning. 

“And this world is on the path to end the same way mine did.”

“You mean to tell me what?” Tsukauchi demanded, expression ridden with worry. 

Izuku sighed, placing his elbows on the conference table and covering his face with his hands. After dropping that bombshell on his friends, they decided to pull in some more experienced professionals. 

Tsukauchi and Aizawa. 

They were now located at Kirishima’s agency, which had been the closest to the resort. More of class A had also been called, but none had arrived yet. Izuku was both dreading and hopefully anticipating the reunion. 

But for now, he had a detective expecting answers from him. 

“In less than two months, this world will be blown to bits,” he summarized. By the way Tsukauchi tensed and his pupils shrank, Izuku knew his statement had rung true. 

“And you know this because you’re from a dimension where it already happened?”

“Yes.” Izuku made sure to respond verbally so the detective’s quirk would work. 

“But in that dimension, you didn’t die like you did here,” Tsukauchi concluded. 

“That’s right.”

The detective plopped down in a chair and pinched his nose, stress pressing his thoughts as this new overwhelming information started to sink in. The younger heroes in the room displayed similar expressions, ones of fright and apprehension. 

“So the robberies and bombings, the organization committing them, their goal is to destroy the world? We’re still waiting for the villains involved in recent incidents to be identified, but since you’re… from the future?” Tsukauchi paused to shake his head, powering through the confusion of it all. “Could you tell us what the organization is called, their motives, and how to stop them?”

“Yeah, of course,” Izuku replied immediately. “I guess that’s one good thing about all this; I get a chance to fix my mistakes. Prevent my failure.”

“Problem Child.”

Izuku met the gaze of his former teacher. Aizawa hadn’t acted too surprised when he first saw him. Izuku supposed he’d just gotten used to expecting the most wild and impossible outcomes from his class. 

“Yeah, Mr. Aizawa?”

“I can tell you’re beating yourself up over whatever you did in the past, but if I’ve learned one thing about you in my years of teaching, it’s that you always give your absolute best effort. There’s no point in dragging yourself down if you gave all you had.”

Izuku’s eyes widened slightly in surprise, and Aizawa continued to peer closely at him. A subtle reminder there was much more observation behind those tired eyes than most people realized. 

“Thanks, I’ll… I’ll remember that,” Izuku responded, looking down because he was doubtful of his own words. 

Tsukauchi gave him a side glance. That was the first lie he’d told the entire meeting. 

“Anyway, this group’s motives, why don’t we start there?” Izuku continued, eager to move the conversation forward. 

The detective whipped out his notepad and a pencil, his two most favorite items in the world. “That sounds perfect. Ready when you are.”

“This organization, though their end goal might be crude and exaggerated, their motivations for doing so are actually quite justified,” Izuku explained. “The reason none of them possess extraordinary strength or show off immense capability is because that’s exactly what they hate the most. Every person there has a weak and feeble quirk.”

“Then how have they done all this bad stuff without getting caught?” Kirishima questioned. 

Izuku tapped his pointer finger against his temple. “They’re smart. Strategic. They don’t believe quirks should define everything, because then they would be nothing. There are people with ‘villainous’ quirks there, who feel they’ve been wrongly judged. Then there are those who have simple weak quirks. Quirks that are almost useless, unless in the right situation.”

He clenched his fists under the table, trying to hide how much he related to the villains’ sentiment. 

“And in a world where the quirk defines the individual, a worthless quirk means a worthless person.” He hesitated, “...I actually kinda agree with them.”

He panicked slightly at all the hardened looks he received for that. 

“I don’t agree with their goals!” he exclaimed. “No cause is worth killing people over, but the cause itself is justified. The Essential actually holds some reason.”

The scribbling of Tsukauchi’s pencil froze, and the detective asked, “What did you say?”

Izuku tilted his head. “Uh, The Essential actually holds some reason?”

“The name of this organization is ‘The Essential’?” Tsukauchi asked to confirm his appalling guess. 

“It is…” Izuku’s eyes swept across the room, and he noticed the alarm in their features. All their eyes were big and some had covered their mouths in shock. “Why is that so upsetting?”

The detective looked around and quickly found no one else was willing to reveal to Izuku the truth, so he sighed deeply, before speaking. 

“The Essential is the same organization who killed you months ago.”

Izuku immediately halted any nervous fidgeting, brain too enthralled by this horrid yet interesting information. Multiple questions stacked themselves up in his mind. 

“How… how did I die?”

Tsukauchi was once again the only person willing to answer. “A gunshot to the head.”

Izuku frowned in disbelief. “A gunshot? Didn’t I have Danger Sense? I should’ve been able to dodge that.”

“We’re not completely sure, but when we found you, a bullet was lodged into your brain, which was identified as the cause of death,” Tsukauchi explained, twirling his pencil. 

Todoroki shuffled uncomfortably in the corner, the memory of the day of his friend’s death making a painful resurfacing. He had been the first to encounter the number one hero’s corpse. 

“Wait, where and when was this?” Izuku continued his questions. “I want to know if it was an event that happened in my world. If it’s not, that explains how I survived, because there was no event to kill me.”

“It was a small scale robbery, our first encounter with The Essential,” Tsukauchi answered. “Just an out of the way laboratory, robbed for materials in making bombs. Huh, that actually makes more sense now.”

Izuku hadn’t even registered that last sentence, because his mind was too stuck on how that murderous event had happened in his world. He recalled the day so perfectly, because it had been his first encounter with The Essential too. 

He had constantly berated himself for not taking down the orgainization right there and then. Especially since he felt there was so much more he could have done. 

The sound of a bullet whizzing past his ear replayed in his mind. 

The pieces connected mentally, and he inhaled sharply. That bullet had killed him in this world. He’d strayed so close to meeting the same demise. 

He’d toed death in that encounter with The Essential, and yet he had bullied himself into thinking he’d fallen short of everyone’s needs. 

“So… did that event happen in your world,” Tsukauchi asked after a minute. He and the others had been observing the realizations storm over his expression. 

“Er- yeah, it did. I remember barely dodging a bullet; Danger Sense hadn’t activated for some reason, and I couldn’t tell where the bullets were coming from. I guess here… he wasn’t able to dodge.”

Before a heavy silence could settle in response to the memory of Izuku’s death, the doors swung open, the creaking announcing the arrival of several familiar faces. There were varying expressions of curiosity, worry, as well as befuddlement. Class A, they’d only been told this meeting was important, and it had to do with Izuku. 

They had no idea there would be a real, living Izuku at the meeting. 

He waved feebly at them, wearing a sheepish smile. “Hey, guys.”

More than one jaw dropped as the group gawked at him. Izuku noticed a couple of them blink repeatedly, as if to make sure their eyes were showing them the truth. 

“Midoriya…” Yaoyorozu breathed, hand raised to her mouth. 

Iida had gone even stiffer than he normally was, feet frozen in place by the door as his brain clunkily processed what it was seeing. “How… how is this possible?”

“We’re… not completely sure,” Tsukauchi admitted, “But he is the real deal. I can confirm that.”

Tsu tilted her head. “You can’t just say that and expect us to be satisfied with your answer, ribbit.”

“Yes of course, we’ll be sure to explain as much as we can, but before we do, there was one more person I called to this meeti-”

The doors exploded open, quite literally. Izuku suppressed a grimace when he saw a flash of blond hair and an angry figure stomping up to the conference table. 

“Kacchan… great to see you again,” Izuku greeted with a reserved smile. Tsukauchi chuckled at the half-truth. 

Bakugo slammed his simmering palms down on the table, glaring Izuku dead in the eye. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Having a meeting to discuss how to take down a dangerous criminal organization.”

The blond sneered. “How the hell are you here? You’re supposed to be dead!”

Iida powered through his rigidity to place a hand on the hothead’s shoulder. “Please, Bakugo, give him a chance to explain himself.”

“It’s a bit of a story to have to repeat again,” Izuku started, “But now that you four are here, I guess I’ll start.”

“Wait, what about Ochako?” Tsu interjected. 

Izuku faltered, and dipped his head. “I uh… I’m not ready for that interaction yet.” He gripped the keychain in his pocket. 

Tsu considered him closely. “She’ll be wanting to see you. The longer you wait, the more unfair it is to her.”

He narrowed his eyes, his previous reasoning haunting him. She wasn’t his Ochako, and he wasn’t hers. He had no right or reason to be with her. 

He lifted his eyes to his friends- no, they weren’t his friends either. As unfair as it was to deny them his friendship, he felt it was just as unfair to steal that friendship from a dead man. 

His choice of asking for help suddenly felt very foolish. 

“Maybe I should just do this alone,” he suggested with a gloomy quiet. 

Tsu facepalmed. “Yup, you really are Izuku.”

He blinked at her. “W-what?”

“You’re always incredibly self-sacrificial, completely disregarding your own well-being and acting completely reckless,” she elaborated. “You never pause to think about other people’s want to help you, assuming you’re protecting them by doing everything yourself.” 

“Oh c’mon!” Mina exclaimed. “I thought we’d already taught you this lesson, back when you ran away from UA!”

“Yeah man!” Kirishima joined in. “We’ve already told you before we’re not gonna let you do everything on your own. We’ll support you through anything!”

“He’s very stubborn,” Shinso added from the shadowed corner, as far away from people as possible.

Kaminari snickered. “You got that right.”

Izuku shook his head. “No, you don’t understa-”

He flinched when he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see it was Iida, giving him a stern yet caring look. “Midoriya, nothing you say will be able to convince us otherwise. We won’t let you struggle ahead in isolation. We are joining you…”

Yaoyorozu nodded her head along with the former class president, and Izuku could see the plan unfolding in her eyes to place a tracking device on him if he refused help. 

“...in whatever we are trying to do,” Iida finished awkwardly. 

“You still haven’t told us what we’re doing here or how the damn nerd’s back,” Bakugo grumbled, arms crossed. 

“Oh right!” Kaminari laughed. “I bet you all are super confused!”

They turned their gazes to Izuku for an explanation. 

Koritsu slammed her hands down on the table, the harsh sound echoing around the room. 

“What happened?” she hissed, sharp glare piercing those around her. 

For a moment, there was nothing but nervous shuffling, until a teen boy spoke up. 

“Well, there aren’t any security cameras in the sewage system, but above ground it looks like number two hero Overcomer and an underground hero took out our forces.”

The leader scowled in confusion. “How would the number two hero be alerted to our operations, and why would an underground hero take part in something so out in the open?”

“You’d have to ask them,” the teen responded, jerking his head at the TV hung on the wall in the meeting room. 

The glowing screen displayed a band of six people getting arrested, all wearing glares of defiance. Koritsu scoffed in disappointment. 

“Who could’ve known about our plans?” she wondered, more to herself than anyone. “And how were they defeated so quickly?”

Her gaze snapped up to her subordinates, and an angry hunger to correct The Essential’s course of action lingered in her words. 

“Let’s shift our plans to account for these disturbances,” she announced. “We‘ll not let some minor inconveniences distract us from our goal.”

The people nodded in agreement. Koryo watched as the young leader’s reasoning grew in aggravated desperation, and her brow furrowed with concern. 

“You don’t actually expect me to believe that shit,” Bakugo snapped. 

Tsukauchi sighed. “He’s telling the truth.”

The blond scoffed, just as aggressive as Izuku remembered. “First Izuku has to go and die, and now I’m just supposed to accept we’ve got a replacement from another dimension!?”

“It’s not like he chose to get killed,” Iida interjected. 

“Yeah well,” Bakugo directed his fiery glare at Izuku, who tilted his head. “Don’t think I’ll be trusting him for a second, just ‘cause he claims he’s from a world where we’re all losers for not stopping those weak-ass villains.”

“We know you missed him,” Mina teased. 

“I DID NOT!!”

Izuku laughed softly, after not having been in the midst of class A’s antics for so long. 

Bakugo whipped in his direction. “SHUT UP!”

“But we still need to talk about how to stop The Essential,” Izuku countered. 

Bakugo opened his mouth, a nasty retort about to burst out, but he clenched his jaw shut before it could. Kaminari and Mina giggled, always loving a good teasing. 

“Alright, on with the real reason for this meeting,” Tsukauchi reeled the full grown adults back in, before turning to Izuku. “How are we going to stop this world from meeting the same end as yours?”

“Well, since you all have made it abundantly clear I won’t be doing it by myself,” Izuku’s tone was apprehensive and hesitant, but under it all he was grateful, “We need to stop all the plans we can predict. Things have already gone a little… differently than how they went in my world, and events will probably continue to diverge, but I can still give you all a wealth of information about their members and how they do things.”

They used the rest of the meeting detailing possible robberies and bombings The Essential could be planning, and spending ample time discussing preventive measures to protect likely targets. Nothing was for certain, because of the way events had shifted, but they were going to do all they could to preserve everything they loved. 

As the meeting drew to a close, Izuku approached his old teacher to make a request that had been weighing on him for a while. 

“What is it?” Aizawa asked dully before Izuku even said a word. 

Izuku rubbed the back of his neck, unsureness clouding his expression. “I, uh, I was wondering about, you know… All Might.”

He felt the vestige perk up at the sound of his name, while Aizawa eyed him. 

“If things are the same here as they were in your dimension, then All Might is being constantly monitored by the hospital. However, your death impacted him quite severely.”

A shadow fell over the younger hero’s face. “That’s what I was afraid of.”’

“He’s not dead, but he is probably closer to death than you remember. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to visit him, might respark some of that fire he lost when you died. After all, you were one of his main reasons for living.”

Izuku still found it weird to hear phrases like ‘your death’ and ‘you died’, but he pushed aside the confusion. “That’s why I wanted to speak with you. To visit him.”

Aizawa gave a short nod of understanding. “I’ll give the hospital a call for you.”

“Thank you,” Izuku said genuinely. 

All Might breathed in deep, filling his slowly deteriorating lung with the fresh air of the sea. The sunset provided a beautiful relief from the bland interior of the hospital, and the breeze was a welcome break from the smell of cleaning products. 

He wished he could get out of the hospital like this more often, but the simple fact of the matter was he couldn’t. His health had taken a steep decline, his recklessness from his glory days finally catching up to him. So was locked up in the hospital, and he needed to stay there, unless he wanted to die. 

Which honestly didn’t look like too bad of an option. 

Especially since Young Midoriya had died. 

A mentor who outlives his successor, what an utter failure. Without a person to carry his legacy, to pass his dreams onto, dying would be a pathetic finish to an ultimately useless life. 

From his bench, he looked despondently at the garbage mounds littering the beach, obscuring the glittering sand and reducing the beach to a dump. Young Midoriya had remained the only person to clean it, and now that he was gone…

All Might so longingly wished for his student back. 

And that was when he felt a gently hesitant hand on his shoulder, and a wonderfully familiar voice spoke. 

“Hey, All Might. It’s me.”

Chapter Text

Now that Izuku thought about it, maybe walking up behind All Might and surprising him had been a bad idea. It was meant to be a gentle surprise! But it seemed your successor returning from the dead was incapable of being gentle in any aspect. 

All Might sprang up off the bench, hallowed eyes big in disbelief. 

“Young Midoriya!” It sounded as if he was trying to shout in astonishment, but the words only came out as a feeble wheeze. His breaths soon became shallow and rapid, lung failing to provide his body the oxygen it required. 

The old hero’s legs faltered, and Izuku dashed forward to keep him from crashing into the ground. “All Might! C’mon, take it easy now!”

Izuku led him a couple steps back to the bench, where All Might collapsed, trying to regain his breath. 

The younger hero sat down beside him and studied this alternate version of his mentor for the few quiet minutes that ensued, and he could sense the vestige version doing the same thing. Silver strands threaded through All Might’s hair, dampening it from its previous shining blond color. The only bits that remained close to golden were the tips of his bangs, which still hung down and framed the sides of his face. 

His face was worn and wrinkled, beaten down by the difficulties of old age, and the rest of his body was slender and frail. No ember of One For All remained, so he hadn’t felt the glorious relief his muscle form brought him in a long, long time. 

And then there were his eyes. No prideful blue light shone in them, only the dull blue of a sky during a storm. Shadows seemed to have crept into those eyes since his successor’s death. 

And they were also filled to the brim with tears. 

It didn’t take a lot for Izuku’s eyes to fill too. 

“A-are you okay now?” the younger hero asked, noticing the labored breathing had stopped. 

All Might’s face crumpled a little. He hadn’t been okay for a long while. “How is this possible?”

Izuku shifted nervously. “Well uh, it’s kinda a long story…”

“I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

A desperate curiosity lingered in the retired hero’s tone, so Izuku nodded, and proceeded to explain everything that had happened. The nuclear weapons in his world, and then the bombings in this one. How he’d lost everything he’d loved, and now had a chance to get it back. All he had to do was prevent the same organization from doing the same thing again. 

All Might didn’t interrupt, but the shock and wonder in his expression increased with every sentence. 

“So yeah, that’s it. But I-I thought you might appreciate a visit, so I asked Mr. Aizawa where you were.”

The older hero grinned, the most happiness he’d shown the entire time. He began the slow movement of reaching out for a hug, which Izuku quickly completed. 

“Thank you, my boy, for coming,” he said next to his student’s ear, thinking back to his previously down spiraling train of thought. “It is very much appreciated.”

Izuku squeezed a little tighter at that, now grinning too. 

When they separated, the younger hero turned his eyes to the sunset, and his grin gave way to apprehension. After spending so many years together, All Might could easily read the worry on his face. 

“Young Midoriya, I have no doubts you’ll succeed in protecting this world,” the blond interjected before Izuku even had to speak a word. 

“Yeah, but I already failed in a different world. And here, The Essential are acting different. They aren’t following the same schedule, so everything I know about them might not even be useful! It’s just…” he frowned at the ground, jaw clenched. “It’s so disheartening.”

All Might hummed. “Well, if you tell yourself you can’t, then you won’t. Besides, you could be looking at this as a chance to fix your mistake, rather than dooming yourself to failure again.”

“He has a point,” the vestige All Might added from within Izuku’s consciousness. 

Izuku shook his head and thought, If you start talking at the same time as him, things are going to get confusing real fast. 

“Ah, right, okay I’ll be quiet.”

“Young Midoriya? Are you alright?”

It took him a second to realize those words had come out of a solid mouth, and not a ghost one. “O-oh, um, yeah! You’re right, I’ll try seeing it that way.”

The retired hero nodded in satisfaction. “Who knows about all this, about you so far?”

“Um… some of 1-A, Mr. Aizawa and Tsukauchi. Eri was the first to recognize me.”

“As well as Young Uraraka, I’m assuming?”

Izuku bit his lip. “Well uh, no, actually. Ochako doesn’t know I’m here yet.”

All Might gave his student a bit of a surprised look at that. “Shouldn’t she have been one of the first people to know?”

“I know, I know. You’re right,” he agreed, before his stubbornness spoke for him again. “But I’m not sure it’s right for me to be with her. She technically loved someone else, not me. It… kinda feels like stealing.”

All Might sighed and shook his head. “I think if you talked with her, you’d leave with a very different opinion.”

“Yeah, probably,” he agreed unsurely, finger tracing the crevices in the All Might keychain in his pocket. 

The sounds of sirens reached both their ears, and they turned their eyes away from the blending shades of orange and yellow in the sunset to a much more disturbing sight. A thick black plume of smoke stained the blue sky. 

Izuku was already up from the bench. “I’ve got to go.”

All Might nodded and smiled reminiscently. “Go on, but make sure to visit, or at least call me later.”

“Okay!” And with a crackling flash of lightning, he was gone. 

Ochako was forced to take a step back from the roaring flames of the building, the thrashing heat too much for her to handle. She’d already rescued as many people as she could from the top floors, but at the level this had escalated to? There wasn’t anything more she could do. 

An all-encompassing guilt roiled in her stomach, because she knew there were still people in there. But going back in would only get herself killed along with them. 

A panic buzzed through the crowd watching, and it wasn’t your typical ‘oh my gosh, people are gonna die!’ type of fear. They wondered if this event was tied to the recent bombings. If the malicious acts were related somehow. 

Ochako was fairly certain they weren’t related at all. 

An ashamed teen had already confessed to the police. His quirk could only generate sparks from his fingertips, but whatever fire came out of those sparks was resistant to water. The efforts of the firemen and hero’s with water-related quirks were futile, and all they could do was watch the building burn to the ground. 

An agonized scream ripped through the air, and Ochako’s guilt spiked. She clutched onto her stomach, hoping she wouldn’t puke later. 

Not for the first time, she wondered what would happen if Izuku was there. He’d fly in, save the day, fill everyone’s lives with the hope and relief they so gravely needed. It was a hope and relief the people hadn’t felt for months. 

No one was as safe as they used to be, and it was all because of his absence. 

Abruptly, there was a streak of lightning with an all too familiar hue. It bolted over the adjacent buildings and crashed through a window, straight into the ferocious flames. Ochako’s eyes snapped open, before squinting at the window it had broken through. 

Was that a person? And she’d seen it before… a while ago…

Going by the hushed quiet in the crowd behind her, they’d noticed the pulse of light too. 

Several seconds later, it burst out of the building, except now it was traveling slower. Ochako could make out a person amidst the crackling power, and they were carrying two others to a different rooftop. 

It clicked in her mind where she’d seen that lightning before. 

She sprinted over the building he was currently on top of. 

Izuku tried patting out the spots of fire burning his jacket, but it proved useless, and he ended up throwing the jacket off instead. It remained simmering on the cold concrete.

He turned his attention away from the blazing mess of fabric to the mother and son he’d pulled out of the building. The two were hugging each other, crying in relief and pain. Their skin rose in bubbles, peeling off in blisters which revealed raw flesh. Their clothes had either been burned off or burned to their skin, but they weren’t dead. And if they received quick medical attention, they would stay not dead. 

Izuku couldn’t risk going down to the panicked crowd, but a hero should’ve spotted him and be arriving soon-

The sound of feet landing on the roof behind him made his chest freeze up. The flicker of his jacket burning caught his eye, and he realized he didn’t have anything covering up his head or face. 

“Izuku?”

Despite the faintness of the voice, he could immediately identify its owner. Crap, he wasn’t ready for this. He hesitantly turned to face Ochako. 

My gosh, was the sight refreshing. All thoughts that didn’t pertain to her were dismissed. The way her bobbing hair framed her face, with her glowing cheeks and warm eyes, it pulled his mind away from everything else. 

Her taking a step towards him snapped him out of it. Before he even put much thought into it…

He ran. 

On a flash of lightning, he flew away, completely on instinct. 

“Oh come on kid!!” Daigoro shouted. “You were so close, you stubborn fool!”

“I know right!” Nana agreed. “Seriously, what is even the point of running?! I thought you got over your fear of talking to girls eons ago!”

As Izuku sprang off the side of a skyscraper, he insisted, “This is different!”

Nana groaned, rubbing her translucent hands down her face. “Then when are you gonna go talk to her? ‘Cause this is ridiculous!”

“I don’t know… at some point. I swear, I will, just… not now.”

All of the vestiges let out a simultaneous sigh. 

Tsu peered down at her vibrating phone on the table. Huh, strange. Normally people texted. 

Kaminari and Shinso watched over her shoulder as she picked it up. The three had been pouring over the info Midoriya had given them about The Essential, making new plans to stop them. 

Oh, it was Ochako calling her. Tsu answered it. 

“Why did I just see Izuku save two people from a burning building?” were the first words out of the speakers. That wasn’t a good start. 

Tsu ignored Kaminari’s wheezing behind her, replying, “That requires a complicated answer, ribbit.”

There was a moment of silence, in which the three held their breath. Then, there was a deep sigh. 

“You mean to tell me, Izuku is either brought back from the dead or being impersonated, and you, and probably some others, knew this, and didn’t think to tell me?! I’m the closest to him out of all of us! I have the right to know!!” Her agitation level grew with every word. 

“It wasn’t our idea to keep it from you,” Tsu added. 

“And you listened?” Her fuming anger could be felt through the phone. “Tell me, what is going on?!”

“Sorry, but that’s not for us to tell you,” Shinso spoke before Tsu’s honesty. 

She shouted in frustration, before hanging up. Well, that could’ve gone better. 

Kaminari burst out laughing. “Izuku is so dead when she finds out it was him!”

“I’m gonna give him a call,” Tsu announced, typing in Midoriya’s number. 

Izuku skidded to a halt atop a building, his buzzing phone distracting him. He pulled it out, saw it was Tsu, and answered. 

“You need to go see Ochako,” she said before he could get a word out. “We just got a very angry call from her about being kept in the dark about you, ribbit.”

“Wait, you didn’t tell her I’m here, did you?”

“No, we didn’t.” That was Shinso’s voice. “But she’s gonna be looking for answers-”

“And she really misses you too,” Tsu interrupted. 

“Seriously dude,” Kaminari piped up, “By waiting, you’re only making things worse for yourself.”

Izuku grimaced, pinching his nose in stress. Did he know Ochako should’ve been the first person to know the truth about him? Yes. Did that mean he was mentally prepared for this interaction? Not at all. But she still deserved to know who he was… even if he technically wasn’t the same man she’d loved. 

“Alright, fine, I’ll go to her place in the morning.”

“Good,” Tsu said in approval, before ending the call. 

Ochako felt like punching something. Still felt like punching something, because it had been a day since she saw Izuku. 

Or at least it looked like Izuku flying around the city, and all her friends had kept their lips sealed about it. She didn’t know if this person was actually Izuku- who was she kidding? Of course it wasn’t; the universe wouldn’t be so kind to her as to give her another chance with a dead man. 

It was probably someone pretending to be him. Someone with a similar quirk and some face-altering technology, trying to spark some futile hope in people with their presence. Who wouldn’t want to be the number one hero, after all?

Or it was Toga, possibly. She’d been able to mimic people’s quirks, and she’d always had an obsession with Izuku. Ochako gritted her teeth and clenched her fists at the thought of her pretending to be Izuku, just to screw with her as some type of vengeful prank. 

Underneath all the anger was the slowly dying hope that she’d see him again. Not some fake, but her Izuku. Her finger traced his mouth guard. 

Knock knock knock. 

Her heart leapt at the sound and its familiarity, before quickly being subdued with suspicion. One of her friends would’ve texted her if they were coming over. She waited a minute, and when a second knock came she knew she had to answer it. 

She opened the door a crack, peering through the slight opening. She inhaled sharply in disbelief and stumbled a few steps backward. 

Izuku gently pushed the door open a bit more and slipped inside, an uncomfortable smile on his face. 

“U-um, hi, Ochako.”

She narrowed her eyes and immediately lunged at him, hand outstretched. His eyes widened in surprise as he instinctively dodged, and she continued taking swipes at him with all five fingers. 

“I don’t wanna talk to you, if this is some sort of joke, Toga!” she angrily shouted. 

“Toga!?” he exclaimed, before realization clicked in his eyes. “Ochako, I’m not Toga!”

“Like I’ll believe that for a second, you fake! My Izuku, if he were really alive, would’ve come talked to me before all this had a chance to happen! Now tell me, who are you?”

Izuku felt a twinge of guilt and her words. He definitely should’ve reached out to her sooner, but then again, he wasn’t her Izuku like she’d said. 

Still, he had a chance to fill the hole left in people’s lives by his absence, like Eri had convinced him of. Now he had a chance to help this Ochako, even if his was dead, and maybe she’d be able to help him in return. 

Instead of dodging again, he grasped her wrist to divert her hand to the side and let her momentum carry her forward into him. The motion surprised her, but not as much as what he did next. 

He leaned forward and tilted his head slightly, so that his lips just brushed hers in a tentative kiss. 

Ochako froze in place, all thoughts of attacking him dispelled immediately, the feeling of the kiss replaying in her mind. 

“Would Toga do that?” he asked softly. 

The simple answer to the question was yes, Ochako did think Toga would do something like that, but that didn’t matter. The familiar warmth of his body against hers, his gentle touch and shy nature were all too recognizable. 

This wasn’t a fake. He was real. 

When she didn’t answer right away, Izuku backed up awkwardly, blushing slightly. He had no reason to be worried though, because Ochako closed the distance between them and looped her arms around the back of his neck. She pressed her lips against his in a much more passionate kiss than before. 

They both had vacancies in their lives, emptiness in their hearts they’d had to cope with. Mending after a loved one’s death was a difficult process, and it had left both of them feeling incomplete, lonely, like something was missing. 

But as they stood there in each other’s arms, expressing deeper feeling with their lips than their words could, they were whole again. The emptiness was filled with love and the vacancy closed by the other’s presence. 

The missing piece of the puzzle was right in their arms, and now nothing but death could snatch that away. 

After a few emotion-filled minutes, the two moved to the couch, nestled next to each other between the cushions. Her head rested on his shoulder, while his arm wrapped around her and drew her close, as if to never lose her again. 

“How?”

That was the first question Ochako asked. Izuku could hear the battling hope and confusion and curiosity in her tone, but at least she believed it was truly him. That was a plus. 

“I might sound a little crazy explaining,” he admitted. 

“Well I’m sure it’ll be easier to answer than why you’ve been avoiding me!”

He gulped nervously, but her soft laugh at his tension relieved any worry. After already explaining his existence multiple times to multiple people, he decided to just force the words out of his throat in one go. 

“I’m from an alternate dimension.”

A second passed, before she lifted her head off his shoulder to give him a confused stare. 

He spotted a hint of suspicion starting to cloud her expression, so he quickly explained, “I-I’m still Izuku, I promise! From what I’ve seen, pretty much everything is the same between my world and your world, except for two things.”

“One of those things is how you didn’t die in your world,” she deduced, and the comforting weight of her head resting on his shoulder returned. 

“Right, and the other is… my world is eight months ahead of this one.”

He could feel her gasp in surprise. “So you know how all this stuff with The Essential ends?”

“...yes.”

The grim air in his voice made her tense up, so she hesitantly asked, “...what happens?”

He sighed, a long sad sound that seemed to dispel mourning along with the air. “Everyone dies. The Essential gain access to a nuclear launch pad, and the keys needed activate it. I…” he shuddered as he pulled in a labored breath, “I lost everyone.”

By the resounding sadness in his voice, the way he pulled her in tighter, and the movement of his chest as he sucked in and released pained breaths of air, she could tell he was being truthful. 

She leaned over and wrapped her arms around him in a hug, trying to ease his hurt and squeezing him tight. Tears glossed over both their eyes. 

“Well, I’m here. You’ve lost me once, and I promise you won’t lose me again.”

She could feel his tears dripping onto her shoulder, eyes finally releasing them. He had missed her warmth, her closeness, and only once he experienced it again did he realize just how much he’d missed it. 

After she moved back, snuggled against his side, he commented, “You wear my mouthguard.”

“Oh, um, you noticed.”

“Yeah, it was digging into my shoulder when you hugged me.”

“Ah! Sorry about that!”

He laughed, puffy red eyes crinkling. A bit of a strange sight, joy mashed up against sorrow like that. “I noticed it when I first saw you; I think it was during a get-together with the other girls? It kinda surprised me at first, but then I realized it made sense, since, you know…”

“You died in this world,” she finished for him, voice dropping to a low and dismal tone. 

He nodded and spoke softly. “You looked a lot sadder than I remembered.”

“Yeah, I could see that difference in myself too… still cute though?”

He chuckled lightly. “I don’t think I can see you any other way.”

She smiled, cheeks glowing, while Izuku thought about the keychain in his pocket. They’d both kept something from the one they’d lost. He was about to tell her this, when her voice cracked out of her throat again. 

“I know I didn’t have it as bad as you, but your death impacted me… really badly. A lot more than everyone else, at least. I, er…” she trailed off, reluctance lingering over her. 

He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Whatever you need to say, please, say it.”

She bit her lip, before continuing. “I’m a little ashamed to admit, but I had to take months off of my hero work. I was pretty neglectful of my agency, and just kinda shut everyone out for a while. It was the most miserable I’ve ever been. I wore your mouthguard to remember you, to make it feel like you were still with me. I’m not sure if it made it better or worse.”

Her hand went up to touch the mouthguard, and Izuku guessed that her emotional connection to it ran deep. Maybe a little too deep, at this point. 

“But I eventually got through it. Well, more like powered through it, because I knew you’d want me to keep smiling and helping people. I… still don’t feel quite right. Tsu’s been telling me to take care of myself, and, well, I should probably listen to her.” She laughed half-heartedly. 

“Ochako,” Izuku’s voice cut in, in a tone that immediately captured her attention. “I would never want you sacrificing your well-being because you felt you had to save people! You do need to take care of yourself.” At the look she sent him, he faltered. “I-I know I’m not the best person to be saying that, b-but still!”

She puffed out a small laugh through her nose. “I know, I know, and I’ll try to be better about that. I just need to be the exact opposite of you!” 

“Hah, um, yeah… don’t do what I do. Please.”

She laughed a little more genuinely, and he grinned too. 

“Though I do want to ask,” Ochako began with a tinge of seriousness. “Why did you not talk to me when you first saw me!?”

And the panic was back. He laughed sheepishly and smiled in an attempt to calm her, which failed, and responded, “I was, um, nervous. Because well, you technically aren’t the Ochako I’ve known for so long. My… my Ochako is dead, and so is your Izuku. It just- it didn’t feel right, knowing that. Kinda like stealing from someone who’s dead, or… betraying the Ochako I knew.”

His somber words quelled her irritation, and her brow furrowed in thought. “This is technically the first time we’ve met, is what you’re saying.”

“Yes, but Eri and quite a few others talked some sense into me, so now I won’t let that get in the way anymore.”

“Also,” she started thoughtfully, “I think the alternate versions of us would want this. This is going to feel really weird to say, but I think my dead self would want us together. Because it’s what I would want, if I died. Don’t you feel the same?”

He frowned in thought for a moment, before realization lit up in his eyes. “Yeah, yeah I think I would want this, so that means this world’s Izuku would be okay with us being together.”

“See! You were worried over nothing!”

He laughed, and she did too. They continued laughing throughout their time snuggled together on the couch, finally feeling real and meaningful happiness for the first time in months. It was that strange combination of sadness and joy. While they mourned and processed what they had lost, they came to realize what they had gained. 

Even though they had technically just met, it was one of the most essential and wonderful meetings in their lives. 

So, Ochako showed up to the next meeting the class had. 

She wasn’t the only new person; nearly all of Class A was present, after having the unique situation explained to them. Izuku was integrating quite smoothly back into the group, but he still got some minor glances or hiccups in conversation. 

It was strange, knowing this was a different Izuku than the one they had known. It was also relieving, but in a guilty pleasure way, as if they’d cheated death. 

Still, the purpose of the meeting was more important than their swirling emotions. 

“In our operations against The Essential,” Tsukauchi began, “what’s succeeded and what hasn’t?”

Izuku spoke up. “The laboratory I protected before the resort incident, did it stay safe?”

“Well…” Kaminari’s voice hesitantly squeaked out of his throat, “kinda?”

“Yes and no,” Tsu answered. 

“C’mon!!” Bakugo yelled, “You can’t win and lose at the same time! How did you screw up?”

“They acted differently than the information Midoriya provided,” Tsu snapped back. “We did manage to protect the targeted laboratory, but they chose a second one to rob afterward, which we weren’t able to protect.”

“We did our best okay?!” Mina exclaimed. 

“Yeah, there wasn’t much you could’ve done if they didn’t stick to what was expected,” Izuku said, before groaning and rubbing his hands down his face in stress. “They’re going to use those materials to make more bombs.”

“...anyone got any good news?” Kirishima tried. 

“We succeeded in our efforts!” Iida proclaimed. 

Yaoyorozu smiled and nodded. “The elementary school is safe and sound, not a scratch on it.”

Ochako gasped faintly. “They’d really target an elementary school like that?”

Todoroki nodded. “They tried very hard to get past us, but failed.”

“Now, the kids were only hurt by their fear of the scary hero Dynamight,” Shinso snarked. 

“Shut up!!” Bakugo demanded, and a few people laughed. 

“Hey, assuming we do stop all these bad guys,” Kaminari started, “how are we gonna explain… you know…” he gestured vaguely at Midoriya, who then shied away from all the eyes landing on him. 

“I’ve actually discussed that somewhat with other officials,” Tsukauchi replied. “We’ll probably just say he never died in the first place, just went into a death-like coma and only recently recovered.”

“What?” Sero asked, a dumb grin on his face. “Why can’t we make them think we’re all losing it mentally by telling the truth!? ‘Oh, yeah, he’s from another dimension in the future where everyone died…’” a laugh burst out of him, “Imagine the media’s response! Priceless!”

Izuku rubbed the back of his neck amidst the class’s laughter. “Yeah… I don’t think that’d go over well.”

“And that’s assuming we even beat these bastards in the first place!” Bakugo reminded them brashly. “If they keep acting differently than we suspect, there’s no way in hell we’re stopping them.”

His words instilled some surprise in all the heroes. If Bakugo was willing to admit they might lose, things really were that bad. 

“If only we had someone on the inside,” Yaoyorozu said wishfully, “who could account for any changes they might make to their plans.”

While the class hung their heads in despondency, Izuku’s thoughts began to churn as he raised a hand to chin in contemplation. 

“You know… that might actually be possible,” he said, and their heads shot up to look at him. 

“Are you suggesting we kidnap one of The Essential’s members?” Iida asked, a hint of disapproval at such a barbaric idea. 

“No, not at all,” Izuku answered. “In my world, well, you see…” he struggled to piece together the right words, before deciding to be blunt about it. “There are still a couple people left alive in my world, other than me, and they might be willing to help us.”

Now, each person had a different reaction. Some gasps, shouts, or merely a shocked expression. They all experienced some surprise and confusion, so overall their response was a tumultuous, “WHAT?!”

Izuku recoiled at the outburst of sound. Tsukauchi whipped out his notepad, and his authoritative voice rose above the puzzled chatter of the heroes. 

“Explanation. Now,” the detective demanded. 

“Alright, so, um… in my world, there was only one place that didn’t get affected by the nuclear blasts or the radiation, and that’s the safety bunker I lived in. That’s also the place the keys were turned to fire the nukes. Minutes before the missiles were fired, I was fighting two of The Essential, trying to stop them.” 

A gloomy shadow fell over his face, while Tsukauchi fervently scribbled the information he was given in his notepad. 

“I failed, obviously, but the point is, those people I was fighting are still alive… I just kinda locked them in the basement and gave them enough food and supplies to last a year, because they kept trying to kill me even after the world had ended. Kinda like a makeshift prison?”

He laughed weakly, before giving the class a minute to digest the sudden information. 

“So wait,” Yaoyorozu was the first to speak again, being one of the quicker processors. “If these people not only know The Essential’s plans, but they were a part of the organization, then-”

“They could think about how their plans would change if they got interrupted!” Kaminari exclaimed. 

“Wow, you do have some amount of brain in there,” Jiro noted, making Kaminari whine about how cruel she was. 

“Okay okay,” Tsukauchi started, getting the conversation back on track like a responsible adult. “You all are forgetting these people are from an alternate dimension, or whatever we’re calling it. We have no means of reaching them.”

Mina laughed, a sly grin sprawled across her face. “You underestimate the power of a certain support gear designer.”

Iida clenched his jaw as his body went rigid. “Are we sure contacting her is a good ide-”

“Oh shush!” Mina waved him off, before turning to Ochako. 

She sighed and smiled faintly at the detective. “We know just the girl.”

Chapter Text

The government official stared at the money dangling in front of his face like a kid staring at candy. He knew he shouldn’t, but…

Koritsu smirked, twirling the bills around in her fingers. She could almost see the man drooling. “Oh c’mon, you can’t say this isn’t a good deal. This is just a taste-tester. With the real amount, you’d be set to retire a couple years from now.”

She could see the temptation building in his eyes, that was, until he clenched them shut and turned his head away. He probably would’ve turned his whole body away, if he wasn’t tied to a chair. 

“No! I c-can’t!” he protested. He tried to remember why he’d even run for office in the first place, to help people. Money had a way of making that reason so unsubstantial though… “It’s wrong, and it’d be putting lives in danger. I can’t.”

Koritsu’s smile gleamed with malice, as if she knew she’d already won. “It sounds more like you’re trying to convince yourself of that.”

Sweat dripped from the man’s face, still keeping his eyelids firmly closed. 

“Well, okay then,” the villain said in an uncaring tone. “Guess I’ll have to switch to a crueler type of bribe.” She gestured to the teen boy behind her, who set the case of money down to fish a detonator out of his pocket. 

She grabbed the chin of the politician and jerked it upwards, so he was forced to open his eyes. She dangled the detonator in front of his face this time. 

“This is set to explode multiple bombs around the city,” she explained, voice cold. “It’s my understanding your wife took your kids out to dinner tonight? That stuffy rich place, Aragawa? Well it’s set to be decimated the moment I press this button.”

The man went as pale as a ghost. 

“Oh, and your older daughter from your ex-wife, she’s currently at Tokyo University, right? I guess a bombing there will kill a lot more than just your daughter, but still, it’s not like you care for those other kids, with how high tuition prices are.”

She fidgeted with the detonator absentmindedly, finger straying dangerously close to the red button in the middle. 

He barely thought about it for five seconds. 

“Okay okay! I’ll give you the information you want!”

That terrible smile returned. “Wonderful. Now tell me, who is in charge of the nuclear launch keys, and where can I find them?”

The words poured out of the man’s mouth, information that could damn the entire world to death. Koritsu trusted the boy behind her to keep track of it all, with his enhanced memory quirk. 

One might ask why the teen was in an organization for people with weak and discriminated quirks, when his was actually quite useful. The truth was, his sister had a quirk that made her forget her life every ten seconds. The world didn’t have a place for her, so he was fighting to end it. 

And now they were closer to the goal than ever before. 

“...can I still have the money?” the official asked when the two villains started to leave, after removing him from the chair. 

Koritsu raised her finger to her mouth in mock-thought, before grinning. “Nah, why don’t you focus on helping the people in your district instead of  squeezing as much money out of them as possible. Oh, and if you talk about this, those places are still set to explode.”

Then the two hopped out of the window into the shadow of the night. The man was left to cry tears of shame and guilt. 

“You’re already done?!” Izuku exclaimed. 

Mei wiped the sweat from her forehead with one hand, twirled some strange electronic tool Izuku had never seen before with the other hand, and returned it to her belt. “Rocket boosters, force shields, teleportation, dimensional travel? All in a day's work for me!”

Nearly everyone in her vicinity blinked at her, and those who didn’t were already used to her inventing mania. They’d learned to just mentally shrug it off. 

“But how did you figure it out?” Iida questioned, looking at the machine Mei had somehow managed to build in a week. 

It was constructed of three pods with thick metal casing, the middle pod slightly larger. Various wires and cords ran between the shells in a wild tangled mess, comparable to a disorganized person’s desk. 

“Oh, it wasn’t that difficult!” Mei assured them, smiling brightly despite their doubtful stares. She bounded up to Izuku. “You’re the only person dead in this world, right?”

“Uh… yeah?”

“And everyone’s dead in your world?”

Izuku opted to nod instead of speak. 

“Then it’s simple! The law of attraction, opposites attract! Since this world and your world have the opposite circumstances, they attract each other…”

She separated her hands above her head, slowly moving them closer together. 

“...slowly getting closer and closer, until they just click together…”

She linked her fingers. 

“...like puzzle pieces.”

Mei then whipped a pointing finger in Izuku’s direction. 

“Which is how you ended up here in the first place!”

Izuku rubbed his temples as he processed the information. When he’d first been dumped into this world, it had been through that strange, swirling portal thing. That occurred because of the two worlds attracting?

“That makes sense… in a weird cosmic sort of way.”

“Exactly! So then all I had to do was mess with the electromagnetic fields and slightly adjust the attraction forces between…” she continued rambling in some fancy language, and had class A not known of her genius, they would’ve thought it was incomprehensible madness. 

“And that’s how we’ll get a portal to open so three of you can go back to this Izuku’s world!” she finished grandly, opening her arms as if she’d just performed a play. 

“...I’m not gonna pretend I understood a word you said,” Shinso admitted. 

“That’s not fricking important right now, Eyebags!” Bakugo shouted, though Shinso was immune to the insult at this point. “What we gotta choose is who of the five of us is going!”

“Midoriya is obviously attending, to lead the other two to the holding location of the villains,” Iida suggested. 

“Should I go, to talk to them with my brainwashing?” Shinso wondered. 

“I don’t think that would work,” Izuku interjected. “They have to actually think to give us the information we want, and they have to think thoroughly. I know you’ve improved your quirk quite a lot, but I don’t think it’s enough. Sorry,” he quickly added when he saw a hint of bitterness pass over Shinso’s face. 

“But weren’t they still trying to kill you, even after the missiles launched?” Ochako asked. “How are we going to get them to talk? ‘Cause it doesn’t sound like they’ll be willing at all.”

Bakugo cracked his knuckles, both his joints and explosions popping. “Just let me at ‘em, and they’ll be singing within minutes.”

“No!” Iida exclaimed, horrified. “We must not result to such brutal behavior! We’re heroes, for goodness sakes.”

Bakugo scoffed. “Yeah well it might be the best shot we’ve got at saving the whole damn world!”

Izuku reluctantly spoke up after a moment. “I might have to agree with Kacchan. These people are stubborn and resilient, and we are kinda desperate for the information. 

“Of course you’re gonna agree with me! I’m always right!!”

Ochako’s brow furrowed slightly. “Are you sure? I mean, there’s really no other way? If there’s not, I’m sure I could squeeze some intel out of them too, but you’re smart. If anyone can think of a better way, it’s you.”

Izuku clenched his jaw, thoughts whirring in his head. Maybe a part of him was still too angry, a part of him wanted to see these people suffer. They’d wiped out an entire world of existence, after all. He had every right to be vengeful, to enjoy their torment. 

But… Ochako was right. There probably was a more humane, and effective, way of getting the intel they wanted out of them. He just had to think of it. 

“Alright, just give me some time and I’ll come up with something,” he promised. 

Bakugo tsked, while Iida looked grateful and Ochako smiled. Shinso, however, was typing something furiously into his phone. 

“Well whenever you guys sort everything out,” Mei started, “the machine will be ready for use! Just call me!” And with that she whizzed out of the room on hover boots, probably to go show off one of her other babies to another hero agency. 

Izuku approached Shinso and asked, “What’re you typing?”

“Eri keeps texting me,” he responded with a clear tone of annoyance. “Asking what we’re doing and if she can help and when she’ll see you again.”

Izuku cringed. “Yeah… I should probably go visit her and my mom sometime soon. I kinda abandoned them a few weeks ago.”

“Why don’t you just invite Eri to the class’s movie night tomorrow?” Ochako’s voice jumped in. Of course she’d been listening to the conversation. 

Shinso suppressed a groan. “Oh, is that the abomination you’ve been inviting me to for weeks?”

“Yes! And you should come!”

Shinso shot her a look of complete and utter refusal and disgust. Social gatherings? Psh, who needs those? Or even wants those. 

“You know what, I think I will invite Eri,” Izuku decided. “It’d be nice, and Shinso, you should come too!”

“I’ll die before I do that.”

A teasing smirk found its way onto Ochako’s face. “I can just text Eri to keep pestering you about it until you accept. I know she’s your weakness.”

“Don’t,” Shinso demanded with a glare. 

Izuku laughed, and soon Ochako followed, and a bit of irritation melted from Shinso’s expression. 

“We’ll see. How about we leave it at that?” Izuku asked. 

The other two nodded, and Izuku found he was looking forward to the get-together. He grinned; it had been a while since he’d looked forward to anything. 

Of course, Iida and Yaoyorozu were the first to arrive, the sticklers of the group. Mina invited them into her apartment, a thrilled smile on her face. 

The rest of the class trickled in, and Izuku would’ve preferred to be one of the earlier people arriving, but he wanted to stop by Ochako’s first and arrive with her. And of course, Ochako tended to be late. 

She blundered out the door when he knocked, smiling sheepishly and apologizing. 

Izuku just laughed. “It’s okay! You sure you’re ready to go?”

“Yes!” Ochako confirmed as she finally pulled her shoe over her heel. 

“Alright,” he chuckled. 

Ochako ended up driving, since Izuku technically didn’t have a license. But if they got pulled over, the sight of the dead number one’s face would probably be enough to get off scot free. 

By the time they arrived, nearly all of the class was there, and they had already decided on the movie. Harry Potter. Somehow they expected to watch all twenty hours of it in one sitting. 

All of the good couch seats were already taken, so Izuku and Ochako were left to sit on the floor, in front of Kaminari and Jiro. 

Mina had a couple announcements to make before they got started. 

“I know I’m gonna sound like an annoyed high school teacher, but no phones!!” she declared. “We’re here to talk to each other, not to whoever’s online! Don’t let the chatter get louder than the movie, and I swear if I hear you chewing-”

“We get it,” Shinso cut in. “Don’t be too loud.”

“Hey, you did come!” Ochako said happily. 

“I was dragged here by a little monster.”

Said little monster waved from next to him. “Hey Deku!”

“Eri!” Izuku smiled, “Nice to see you again.”

“Yeah!” She got up from next to Shinso, who maybe looked a little upset at her leaving, and pointed to the space next to Ochako, “Is it alright if I sit here?”

“Of course,” both Izuku and Ochako chorused. 

“Ahem!” Mina huffed indignantly. “I never got to the end of my announcements, Shinso!”

“What!?”

“Shut up, you blabber-mouth!”

“I- what- huh?”

The class laughed, subduing Shinso to an annoyed grumble, and Izuku felt very at home among his friends, even if they were alternate versions of the people he used to know. 

“Now, for the last thing, though I know some of you may be very tempted,” Mina looked very obviously at Izuku and Ochako, “No public displays of affection allowed! I don’t wanna see any face sucking!”

Laughter burst out around the room as the two blushed furiously. Even as adults, it was still too easy. 

Thankfully, they were saved from their torment as the movie started, and the class was quickly pulled into the world of magic and wonder that Harry Potter provided. Once they were a decent amount into the movie, Izuku asked Eri a question that had been weighing on him since he saw her. 

“Hey, how’s my mom doing?” He made sure to speak in a hushed tone, as to not earn a glare from Mina. 

“She’s good, better now that you’ve accepted help from your friends,” Eri answered in a whisper. “But it’d still be a good idea to visit her.”

Izuku nodded. “Yeah, it’s been on my mind to do.”

“Don’t avoid her like you did me,” Ochako said accusingly, which caused his face to heat up slightly. 

“Ah, yeah, sorry I did that,” he apologized… again. 

Ochako shook her head at his frequent apologies. “Just try not to make the same mistake again with your mom, or with other people.”

“Yeah, I’ve been focusing a lot on fixing past mistakes recently…”

The movie rolled on, the sky grew darker, and the stars grew brighter. The need for sleep crept into the heroes’ minds, nagging them, gradually pulling them down into the realm of unconsciousness. 

Nearly everyone dozed off at some point during the movies, which did continue playing the entire night. Shinso was the only one to stay awake through all of it. 

Sometime after midnight, Izuku fell asleep, Ochako’s head on his chest, and Eri snuggled against her side. It was a warm, comforting feeling, to fall asleep surrounded by people who had stuck with him through everything. 

The next time his eyes creaked open, it was after four in the morning. He groggily raised his head, which felt heavier under the weight of sleep. As he looked around, careful not to disturb Ochako, he noticed most everyone else was peacefully sleeping. 

Well, except Shinso, who was in the kitchen making (another) pot of coffee. 

He decided to turn his dragging thoughts to the TV, which was emanating the sounds of battle. Oh, it wasn’t a battle. It was a Quidditch match. Harry was searching for the snitch while his teammates zoomed around on broomsticks beneath him. 

His weary mind drearily provided that the resurrection stone was within the first snitch Harry ever caught. 

His eyes snapped open with a realization, liveliness returning to his thoughts. The resurrection stone! It could bring back the ghosts of dead people, so one could talk to them!

That’s how they could get information out of The Essential members still living in his world. 

Bakugo and Ochako had already agreed they could pick information out of the villains. But from the villains’ points of view, the two of them should be dead. What if the villains thought they were ghosts? Especially if they’d lost some lucidity over time, they’d sing information to people they thought were fragments of their imagination. 

Bakugo and Ochako just had to pretend they were ghosts, that they had died in the blast and had now returned to haunt their killers. If they could pull that off, they could get all the intel they needed. 

It would definitely be one of the more interesting interrogation scenes he’d witnessed. 

“Hell yeah, I can’t wait to scare the shit of those bastards,” Bakugo grinned, cracking his knuckles. 

“Uhh, that’s not exactly it,” Midoriya contradicted. “It’s more like, them thinking it doesn’t matter if they give up information or not, because you’re just a ghost.”

“Tch, whatever.”

“I think it sounds fun!” Ochako added. 

“Uraraka! Tricking people for interrogation purposes should not be viewed as entertaining!” Iida scolded. 

“Wanna know what’ll be funner?” Mei interjected. “Testing out my dimension-travel machine!”

Shinso quirked an eyebrow. “Testing?”

“Well yeah! It’s never been used before, so I sure hope it works!”

Izuku, Ochako, and Bakugo all paused in putting on their radiation-proof gear. Even Bakugo showed a touch of apprehension at those words. 

“If we die in your dumb machine, I’m gonna kill you,” the blond spat. 

“Oh I’m sure it’ll be fine!” Mei reassured, which was possibly a little over-optimistic. 

The three were soon dressed up in a suit with material that would protect them fully from the irradiated air. Their footsteps were heavy as they walked up to the machine, Izuku taking the middle, slightly bigger pod, while Ochako and Bakugo took those next to him. 

Mei fiddled with some controls in the same way a toddler would play with its toys, and the metal started vibrating around the pods’ occupants. Different tones of buzzing hummed around the room as the machine drew the power it needed to operate. 

After a couple minutes, in which Shinso and Iida looked very pleased to not be in their friends’ positions, Mei called out, “You all ready?!”

“Hell yeah!”

“I hope?”

“No…”

“That’s great!” Mei exclaimed, just before pulling a dramatically large lever. 

Their entire world went white; their senses were blinded. They could feel nothing around them, except a stretching, pulling feeling, like they were being tugged in two opposite directions, but could be strung out infinitely. It was deadly quiet, and dreadfully loud. All  the while, their eyes kept feeding them that same, eerily white color. 

Until it went black. 

“...how are they gonna get back?” Shinso asked. 

Iida went rigid. “We never discussed their means of return!”

“Did we seriously just abandon some of the top heroes in an alternate dimension?” Shinso sounded more disappointed than alarmed. 

Mei waved off Iida’s extreme panicking. “You obviously were not listening before, when I said it’ll be fine!”

“How is any of this fine!?”

“That natural laws of the universe will bring them back! ‘Cause this world and that world are opposites, they’ll be pulled back here! The same way Midoriya got here in the first place!”

Shinso snorted at how quickly Iida calmed down and realized his overreaction. 

“So wait,” the underground hero started, “This machine just reverses one of the fundamental laws of nature, opposites attract?”

“Yup!”

“...that makes more sense, yet no sense at the same time.”

Iida just stood there, blinking confusedly upon the conversation. 

Even Bakugo could do nothing but gape at the group’s new surroundings. He and Ochako just stared, wide eyed, at the desolate ruins around them. 

“You weren’t kidding,” Bakugo said at record low volumes. 

Izuku simply peered around at the familiar landscape, an old sadness returning to his eyes. “No, I wasn’t.”

His two companions had just gained a speck of understanding of what exactly he’d endured. That understanding only grew as he led them through the shattered streets and crumbling buildings. Within the toppled skyscrapers and crushing silence, they saw Izuku’s past, as well as their future. 

It wasn’t long before they reached the bunker, surrounded by its rocky debris. Izuku led them through the entrance, through the decontaminator, and into the dim room that had spelled the world’s doom. 

“This is where you lived… for months?” Ochako questioned, gazing at the bundle of blankets, canned food, and CD player. 

Izuku could only manage a nod. He hadn’t spoken the entire walk, instead spending his mental energy on trying to block out painful memories. He waited until the tears in his eyes had dried to take off his helmet. 

“They’re this way,” he said, directing them to the door that led to the sub-basement. 

The further they traveled down the steps, the more the shadows dominated. Bakugo’s hand began glowing in a steady sizzle of small explosions, which was enough to light the way. Soon, the three of them were down a narrow hallway, in front of a locked door. 

“You just shoved ‘em down here?” Bakugo asked, a look of distaste upon his face. “Seems a little, I dunno, inhumane.”

“Says the hero who ranks first in injuring villains,” Ochako shot back, earning her a growl. 

“There’s plenty of food in there, and the heater is in the next room over, so it’s not like they’re dying down here. They refused to stop attacking me, so I had no choice but to put them in here, as a kind of containment cell,” Izuku explained. 

Scuffling against the floor sounded from behind the door, and Izuku swallowed nervously. 

“They probably heard us coming, so be ready if they decide to attack.”

Bakugo smirked, his small explosions gaining size. “I ain’t afraid of these weaklings.”

“Remember, you’re trying to convince them you’re ghosts. I’ll stay out here, since they know I survived. Just call me if you need help.”

Once Izuku saw both of them nod in understanding, he creaked the door open, and light streamed out into the dark hallway. The second thing to come out was a knife, which Bakugo blasted away, before blasting inside. By the time Ochako entered, the teen boy who’d thrown the blade was cowering under Bakugo’s leering form. 

“Wha- how- you’re dead!!”

The other prisoner, an older lady sitting against the wall, gazed with wide eyes upon the living human being. She made no move to attack. 

“That’s right, ya little rat! You killed me!” Bakugo snarled. 

“You killed everyone,” Ochako added with her arms crossed. 

Outside, Izuku used a small amount of Smokescreen to make the ‘ghost’s’ arrival more mystical, and he slammed the door, making it seem like it had closed of its own volition. 

“Now I can’t beat your asses anymore!” Bakugo continued, making sure to hover domineeringly over the boy, but not actually touch him. 

The boy was too horrified to speak, so the woman did it for him. “We must really be losing our minds if we’re seeing ghosts now.” She was strangely calm for being in such a peculiar situation. “What, have you come to haunt us in revenge for what we did?”

“More or less,” Ochako answered. “And to guilt-trip you. Don’t you miss the fresh air and green grass at all?”

The boy’s voice returned to him. “My sister wasn’t allowed to enjoy it, and there was a lot more cruelty than anything else. So no, I don’t miss it.”

The woman didn’t respond. 

“But like, what if someone had managed to stop you from bombing the beach resort and elementary school,” Ochako continued, “couldn’t you have stopped then?”

“Those were just to draw attention!” the boy snapped back. “As long as we successfully bribed that one official into giving us the location of the guy with the launch keys, we’d be fine!”

The woman hummed in thought. “Koritsu would’ve probably sped up operations too. She was so desperate for control in the end; it was sad to see.”

After being in solitude for so long, these people seemed more than willing to talk. And the two heroes were more than willing to listen, especially when they were talking about important information. 

“So if all your plans got screwed, you would’ve moved the date of your plans up, instead of pushing them back like a sensible person?” Bakugo questioned, voice low. 

The woman nodded. “Koritsu had originally wanted to destroy the world a few weeks earlier, on… on my birthday. Due to the time needed to gather the materials and intel necessary, it was pushed back. But if things were going wrong, she’d probably get impatient and move it back to my birthday.”

“When’s your birthday?” Ochako asked. Maybe her eagerness for the answer showed a little too much, because the woman didn’t respond right away. Instead, she hung her head, which was replaying old memories. 

“It’s because of me this whole thing started,” the woman recalled sadly. “Koritsu is my granddaughter, and she holds me in high esteem. She saw how I suffered because of my quirklessness, and decided to take action. At first, I agreed with her.”

“At first?” Now it was the boy asking the question. “But Koryo, you were her strongest supporter!”

The woman, Koryo, nodded. “I liked the idea of a world where a quirk didn’t define a person and their role in society, which was why I supported Koritsu in her early stages of planning. But her quirk, Obsession, began to blow it way out of proportion.”

Koryo turned her eyes to the boy, who was gazing at her with a sense of saddened betrayal. 

“I never wanted any of this to happen. But then The Essential started gaining members, and by the time I gained the courage to say something against the plans I had initially put into fruition, it was too late. It’s all my fault.”

The woman laughed, a slow and sorrowful sound that convinced the two heroes in the room of the validity of her words. 

“It’s ironic, really. Koritsu was fighting for a world that wasn’t defined by quirks, and in the process she became exactly what she hated. In the end, every decision she made was because of her quirk’s influence on her mind. Obsession defined her.”

Koritsu grinned, a manic smile fed by the joy in what she was doing. 

Blood stained her clothing and was smeared over her face, but the smell only exhilarated her, because she knew it had only brought her closer to her goal. 

The guard protecting the nuclear launch keys had fought hard, but her willpower was too strong to be overcome. 

The man now lay dead at her feet in a satisfying clump. She strode past him to the safe he’d been guarding, and after being told the passcode over comms, she opened the metal door. 

Two silver keys in pristine condition. 

She salivated at the sight of them, overcome by the immense pleasure of being that much closer to completing her mission. Her Obsession. 

Koritsu snatched the keys with her blood-soaked fingers, immediately contaminating them and ruining their silver shine. She was beaming as she left the building. 

Her quirk was driving her to insanity. 

Koryo shook her head dolefully. “I wish I’d had the power to help her, but it’s much too late now.”

Ochako frowned slightly, seeing the genuineness of her words. Being the compassionate soul she is, she said, “I’m so sorry.”

Bakugo scoffed, and everyone turned their eyes to him. “You really are pathetic. Instead of actually standing up for what you knew you had to do, you just sat on your ass and let everyone die because of it. You ain’t getting any remorse from me.”

Koryo broke eye contact. “Yes, you’re right…”

After a moment of consideration, Ochako spoke up again. “What if…” she glanced over at Bakugo, who narrowed his eyes. “What if we told you, in another world, another dimension, we had a chance to stop this from happening.”

“Pink Cheeks,” Bakugo hissed, not liking the idea of revealing the truth. 

Koryo tilted her head, curiosity replacing some of the sadness in her expression. “Well, I’d say I want to help.”

“You’d be willing to answer all our questions about The Essential’s plans?” Ochako asked earnestly. 

“Of course.”

“Koryo! You can’t do this!” the boy exclaimed. 

She looked at him pointedly. “Sorry, but I do not have the same goals as you.” She looked back to the heroes. “If, by some miracle, you are really living and are from an alternate universe, I’d give you all the information I could in order to stop another version of Koritsu.”

Ochako smiled, and she looked over at Bakugo, who rolled his eyes. Looked like they were going with Ochako’s idea of telling the truth. 

Shinso almost laughed at the shrill scream Iida let out when a swirling metallic portal appeared in the middle of the room. 

“There they are!” Mei exclaimed as if this was a totally normal occurrence. Out of the twisting, warped air emerged three figures. Their friends collapsed to the ground, unconscious but unharmed. “Just give them a moment to recover and they’ll be fine!”

The first question Iida asked once the three were conscious was, “Are you okay?”

“Well, we aren’t dead,” Izuku responded with a strained voice. 

“I never wanna do that crap again,” Bakugo groaned from the floor. 

Ochako raised her hand. “I second that.”

“Third,” Izuku agreed. 

“Did you get the information we need?” Shinso questioned. “Were they willing to talk?”

“Oh yeah, she was more than willing!” Ochako answered happily, sitting up. “Trust me, we have all the intel we need and more to defeat these people.”

“That’s wonderful!” Iida proclaimed. 

“Call the rest of the idiots,” Bakugo ordered, and Iida immediately moved to take out his phone. “We’ve got a plan to make.”

It was time to fulfill Koryo’s wish, and stop Koritsu from completing her Obsession.

Chapter Text

Izuku paced back and forth across his new apartment, his footsteps heavy against the floor. His thoughts were whirling with worries and preoccupations, and they always traveled back to the same fear:

What if we fail?

They’d constructed a plan to bring down The Essential. Koryo’s birthday, the day of the attack, was in two days. They were going to strike down the organization tomorrow. Or rather, they were hoping to strike it down. 

They’d only had a few days to scrap together this plan, afterall. 

Then again, Koritsu had also been rushing her operations, so neither side would have optimal organization. 

Still, Izuku couldn’t help but worry, if they failed, it would all be for nothing. The world could end in two days, if something went amiss. And if he managed to survive a second nuclear fallout, he didn’t think he’d survive his mental state afterwards. 

The severe, crushing anxiety of life and death weighed on his mind. It made his stomach churn and twist, and the agitated pacing didn’t help. 

“Young Midoriya, I don’t need to read your mind to know your current train of thought isn’t exactly a healthy one,” All Might spoke up. 

Izuku’s mentor had originally paid him a visit for the purpose of spending some extra time with his revived successor, but after seeing the detrimental fear hovering over him, he decided to help with that instead. 

“And I can read your mind, so I can tell just how unhealthy your train of thought is!”

But there was one thing the living All Might hadn’t accounted for; Izuku already had a vestige version of him within his consciousness to ease any spiking anxiety. 

And neither All Might was going to back down from their job of being a father figure. 

“You always underestimate yourself, and forget you have people around you that you can rely on. You have to rememb-”

“-won’t fail! Because both you and your friends are more prepared than the first time this happened, so you hav-”

“-not on you, since you can share the burden with others. With your friends! You just have to trus-”

“-ave confidence in your new plan, so it’ll be more likely for it to succee-”

Izuku just stood there, not having the nerve to interrupt either one of his mentors, even though he could barely track their line of conversation. 

“-you’re more capable than you know, and so are your frien-”

“-stop letting the past weight you down and scare-”

“-so have confidence in yourself, and them-”

“-what’s done is done, so look to the-”

Izuku really appreciated his mentor’s words, he really did, but not when he couldn’t understand a thing they were saying. The interchanging between the clear and foggy voice was making him dizzy, and after a couple minutes, his extremely confused brain couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Okay okay, just please, stop.”

Both All Might’s blinked at him confusedly. He’d never interrupted one of their motivational speeches before. 

“You both are talking at the same time, and it’s getting really really confusing.”

Realization spread across the golden face of the vestige. “Ah, yeah, sorry about that.”

The living All Might’s confusion only grew. “What do you mean, both?”

Izuku clasped his hands together and took a deep breath. “There’s also a vestige version of you inside of my head.”

The confusion remained for a second longer, before it was wiped away by shock. All Might’s eyes started darting around the room, trying to catch a glimpse of the golden form that was his dead self. 

“You mean to tell me… since I died in your world… I’m a ghost because of One For All… and I’m living inside of your head?” the retired hero asked, a strange amount of unease apparent in his expression. 

“...yes?” Izuku hadn’t expected All Might to look so unnerved at such an idea. The vestige All Might chuckled at his frantic searching. 

The creak of the door opening ripped through the surprise in the air. 

Relief flooded the living All Might’s face at the sight of Ochako. “Perfect timing!”

Ochako blinked. “Uh, why?”

All Might got up and moved for the door at an unhealthy speed, blue eyes still scanning every speck of dust in the air. “Izuku’s having some anxiety about your plan tomorrow, so I thought I’d help him. But now I know there’s a ghost in here, a ghost of me. I just- it’s so- I can’t.”

With that, All Might abruptly left the apartment. The golden vestige sighed sadly. “I think he’s afraid of dying, knowing he won’t get to be a vestige, because this world’s One For All is gone.”

Izuku hummed in understanding, and Ochako gave him a weird look, “...what’re you doing? What was All Might saying about a ghost?”

“Oh, um, sorry.” Izuku realized how strange it must be to know someone’s talking with someone who isn’t visible. “Since All Might died in my world, there’s a vestige of him in One For All, who I can see and talk to, but you guys… can’t.”

“Ahh,” she nodded. “That makes sense. Is he… out right now?” Ochako saw how he turned his eyes to land on an exact point in space, where the vestige’s face must be. She took the action as a yes. 

“He said he’s going now, and uh... yeah now he’s gone.” He turned his eyes back to her, mouth forming a strained smile. 

“All Might also said you’re feeling nervous,” she said as she walked up to him. “Are you okay?”

Ochako had spent enough time watching his smile to know the one he was giving her now was fake. He couldn’t meet her eyes, and answered, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “I’ll take that fine, as in fricked, insecure, neurotic and emotional.” He groaned, cheap smile dropping off his face, and she grinned. “We’ll just try our best. That’s all we can ever do.”

“Yeah, but what if our best isn’t enough. What if I end up in the same position I was in before, where- well, you saw it. It’s a terrible and pointless way to live.”

“You don’t know that’s going to happen.”

“But what if it does?”

“C’mon, have more confidence in yourself, and the people around you. Tomorrow, we’re gonna save the world and have a party afterwards!” He frowned at her words. “What? Don’t wanna go to a party?”

“No no, that sounds fine, I just… I don’t think I can be as optimistic as you can.”

She studied his expression for a moment, before deciding, “I think you just need something to distract yourself.”

She broke away from him, retrieved her phone out of her pocket, and picked out a song that had left a positive imprint on her memory. For the First Time by The Script.

~She's all laid up in bed with a broken heart~

Ochako plopped her phone down on the couch, letting its little speakers fill the room with a tune. 

~And we don't know how, how we got into this mad situation~

She approached Izuku again and looped her arms around his neck, hoping her close presence and the music would be enough to draw his thoughts away from the things he couldn’t control. There was no purpose in worrying about it, and this might get him to stop. 

~And we don't know how, how we got into this mess, is it God's test?~

Izuku’s hands connected behind her back, a slight look of bewilderment upon his face. 

~Trying to make it work, but man, these times are hard~

She just smiled up at him, wanting her grin to comfort him in the same way his had comforted her. It seemed to work, because a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. 

Ochako began to sway gently to the music. Izuku sucked in a sharp breath, remembering how he used to do this with Nana, pretending Ochako was still with him. 

~We're smiling, but we're close to tears, even after all these years~

But now it was real. 

~We just now got the feeling that we're meeting… for the first time~

Ochako laughed lightly. “You know, that’s a little funny, since we technically met for the first time a little while ago.”

“Hah, yeah, I guess that’s true. But I think we’re the exception, with everything weird that’s happened.”

“Hey, you at least have the same poor dancing skills as this world’s Izuku,” Ochako commented jokingly at how all they could manage was swaying side to side. 

Izuku managed a laugh too. “Yeah, despite Mina’s best efforts, I’ve never been very good at this.”

~And we both know how, how we're gonna make it work when it hurts. When you pick yourself up, you get kicked to the dirt~

“Hey.” Izuku blinked at Ochako’s change in tone. “I know you’re really nervous about what’s going to happen tomorrow, I can feel it in the way you’re still tensed right now.”

Izuku smiled sheepishly, “...it’s that obvious?”

Ochako snorted, “You’ve never been good at hiding how you feel!”

~Doing things we haven't for a while, a while, yeah~

“I just want you to know,” her voice smoothed back over to the heartfelt tone it had been before, “no matter what happens tomorrow, however the plan folds out, success or failure, life or death, future or past…”

~We just now got the feeling that we're meeting… for the first time~

“...I’ll always love you.”

Izuku’s eyes widened for a second, pricking with tears, before he clenched them shut. Teardrops squeezed out and left trails down his cheeks as she continued talking. 

“Trust me, I’m scared too. I know tomorrow we might fail, we might all die,” her voice cracked. “But… but I’m not gonna give into the fear, I’m not gonna let it control me or my actions. I’m still gonna try my best, fight my hardest, for the future I want to have with you.”

He opened his eyes, and through a lens of tears, was able to see her determined expression. 

~We're smiling, but we're close to tears~

She buried her face in his shoulder, so her voice was muffled when she spoke. “Promise me you’ll do the same.”

He pulled her in, so their swaying stopped as their gentle hold on each other turned into a hug. “I promise.”

His voice was barely a whisper, but by the way she squeezed him tighter, she heard it. 

~Oh, these times are hard. Yeah, they're making us crazy. Don't give up on me, baby~

As the final verses of the song rang out in the air, they stood there, hugging. All of their worries and stressors were lessened as their emotions fled through their eyes. 

“I have something I want to give you, for tomorrow,” he said after a bit, and they hesitantly separated. 

~Don't give up on me, baby~

While the last sounds of the song faded from the room, he reached into his pocket and brought out an item that had held his thoughts captive for sometime. Maybe by giving it up… his mind would be a little more free. 

Ochako gasped at the worn down All Might keychain dangling from his hand. 

“Ochako gave this to me before… it all happened. She said it was a good luck charm, and it’d give me the confidence I needed. I want to give it to you now.”

“No no, I can’t do that!” Ochako countered immediately, taking a step back. “That’s all you have to remember her by. Besides, I still have mine from this world, remember?”

“Yeah, that’s true, but I already have you to remember her by. To me, this keychain is just a reminder of a period of my life I’m trying to forget. I want to give it to you in the hopes it’ll inspire some good thoughts and remind you of what we’re fighting for.”

He reached forward and gently grasped her hand, smoothing it open and placing the keychain in her soft palm. He smiled sadly as he closed her hand over it. 

“Or it can be like she said, a good luck charm so you’ll perform well tomorrow.”

Ochako was struck silent for a moment, no words befitting of the moment arising in her mind. “T-thank you.” She pulled the keychain close to her chest and promised, “I’ll keep it safe and never forget what it stands for.”

Izuku nodded, his smile fading, and he took a step back. 

“Well, if you’re going to give me something to inspire nice memories, then I’ve got to give you something too,” Ochako concluded. 

“N-no, you don’t have to do that if you don’t wan-”

“I wanna do it!” she insisted. “You kept this keychain to remember her, and are now giving it back to me. I wore his mouth guard to remember him, so that’s what I could give you.”

Her hands went up to the gadget she still had fastened around her neck, before gingerly tracing the strap to the back of her neck and undoing it. She held it out to Izuku, and he stared at it dumbly. 

“It’s still in good condition, and just like you, all it seems to do is remind me of painful memories. But with you, maybe it can amount to some good.” She smiled cheerfully at him, and a small grin found his face too. 

“Thank you,” he said as he took the mouth guard from her, before fixing it around his neck. Granted, it was a little more worn and dirty than his usual mouthguard, but the emotion this one carried meant more than any of that. 

“Now do you think we’re ready for the fight tomorrow?” Ochako asked, optimism in her tone. 

“I sure hope so.”

Izuku stood in front of the federal building, blocking the entrances. A number of his former classmates stood with him, including Bakugo, Yaoyorozu, Tsu, Kirishima, Hagakure, and Jiro. 

There were already Essential members gathering around them, hidden and unseen, creeping in the heroes’ blind spots. Jiro was keeping them updated of where they all were located, her earphone jacks twitching this way and that. 

In the basement of the building behind them was the nuclear launch pad. Admittedly, it was a little strange to have such a place in the middle of the city, but that’s probably what the builders were going for when first constructing it. No one would think to come here to end the world. 

But The Essential were prepared and had done extensive research, and by research he meant torture and bribing. Koritsu had the launch keys at this point, so the only thing standing in between the world and death was Izuku and the heroes around him. 

His stomach reeled at being in such a familiar place. Just below him was where he’d spent his days in isolation and cold loneliness. 

He hoped with all his heart he wouldn’t have to return to that. 

Ochako glared defiantly at the villains approaching the hospital. This attack was just a distraction, a ruse meant to draw the heroes away from The Essential’s main point of interest. 

That’s where Izuku was now. She wished she was with him, but she could understand why she was needed here. 

Ochako forced her thoughts back to the fight at hand. Someone with some flight gear tried to zoom over their heads, but she leapt up using her quirk and latched onto them with her grappling hooks. She flipped around in the air and released them to send them slamming into the ground. 

She wasn’t going to let these villains hurt the innocent and wounded within. People who were still injured from their previous bombings were in the hospital, recovering. 

With her was Shinso, Iida, Todoroki, Kaminari, Mina, and Tokoyami. They would protect the people here, so the others could focus on protecting the world. 

“Dammit!” Izuku shouted as someone slipped past the line of heroes defending the building. “Someone got past!”

And that one person wasn’t the last. A few more managed to sneak past the heroes while they were engaged in combat with others. 

Jiro forced back ten villains with the shock waves from the speakers in her boots. “I’ll go after them!”

Yaoyorozu filled her spot with a cannon, which began firing off bombs of sleeping gas. 

“I’ll go with her!” said Hagakure’s voice. They couldn’t see her leaving, but they trusted that she’d done what she said. 

Izuku gritted his teeth in frustration, accidentally smashing a support item against the ground too hard, shattering the concrete. He knew he was needed out here, but he desperately wanted to chase after those who’d slipped inside. 

“Deku,” Bakugo said over the comms. 

“What!?”

“When you get like this you just end up hurting others and yourself. Go after the people who went inside.”

Izuku spotted the blond exploding through the air, chasing villains with tech that let them fly. 

“I’ll make up for your slack!” Izuku couldn’t tell if that was a nice thing to say or an insult, but that was all he needed to rush inside the building to help decide the fate of the world. 

Katsuki spotted Deku sprinting into the building in a streak of green light, and he narrowed his eyes. The damn nerd better not fail a second time. He knew better than to say this over the comms, though. 

After making sure the villains in the sky didn’t die after having their flying support gear broken, he blasted back up into the air to see if there were any more of the pesky flies. He instead found someone much more important. 

Koritsu. 

He remembered what Koryo had said about her, how her quirk was driving her to do things she’d never want if she was sane. 

Someone who actually cared for these bastards would be better against someone like her, but all the others were occupied with their own battles. 

Katsuki groaned. Looked like this one was up to him. 

“I’m taking on the leader,” he said, pressing his ear piece so the others would hear him. 

He got a chorus of “be careful” and “don’t kill her.” Tch, like he needed their advice. 

He plummeted down from the sky to face the person who’d started this whole mess. 

Ochako flipped someone over her shoulder, before whipping around to float someone with her quirk, then grabbing a bomb with her grappling hook and throwing it up into the air where it could detonate without a problem. 

Things were going well!

No one had gotten into the hospital, and all the villains had failed to plant any bombs. It looked like the hospital would remain safe, along with all its patients. 

Ochako only hoped the same would be true for Izuku. 

In a dark hallway, a bullet whizzed past Izuku’s ear, and he flinched away. The only warning he’d gotten was the faint sound of a muted gunshot and the whistling of the air as the bullet streaked towards him. 

Why didn’t Danger Sense activate?!

He whipped around in circles, scanning for the origin point of the bullet, which had now tinked harmlessly to the ground. 

When another bullet tore through the air without warning, which Izuku barely dodged, he sent out Smokescreen. This way, hopefully whoever was targeting him wouldn’t be able to aim, and the moving smoke would give him more of a warning. 

But this also meant he couldn’t locate the person attacking him. 

A cackling emerged from somewhere above him, and Izuku tried to stop his heart rate from spiking at the terrifying sound. 

“Oho! Smart move, hero!” 

Another bullet came at him, but it had come from a different direction than the voice, judging by the disturbance to the smoke. 

“But I’m afraid you won’t be getting out of this one alive.”

“Says you!” Izuku retorted as he shot an airblast to the ceiling. 

“I have no idea how you survived your first encounter with me,” the villain continued, and Izuku’s blood ran cold. “But I can assure you, I won’t let that happen again.”

A stinging cold grazed Izuku’s forearm, and he bit his lip to stop any sound of pain from escaping him. 

How are they doing this?

It was clear the person talking and the person shooting were two different people, since the bullets all came from generally the same area, while the voice was in a completely different position. Izuku decided to carefully move in the direction the bullets were coming from. If the person talking had to rely on someone else to do the dirty work, then they probably weren’t all too powerful by themselves. So, take out the most powerful first.

The only problem with this was, the closer he got to the shooter, the harder it was to dodge. 

Just as he was able to see a vague figure in the smoke, another bullet tore through the air. Pain exploded in his shoulder, and this time he wasn’t able to hold back his shout of pain. When his hand moved away from clenching the wound, it was slippery with blood. 

This wasn’t a normal gun, for it to do that level of damage. 

He was distracted from his pain for an instant when he heard the light patter of footsteps, and the blurry figure moved. Despite the obvious threat to his life, he chased after it. 

More gunshots followed as he ran after the shooter, though something about it didn’t feel right. Or sound right. The footsteps were much too light to be an adult, and this wasn’t the person who’d been speaking before. 

So who was it and why were they listening to this villain?

The smoke began to thin, and the figure became clearer. As Izuku dodged a few more bullets, he tried to make out who they were. They had white hair, the same color as the smoke, and it was long, too. They were smaller than an adult, but not a child either. A teenager. He thought they had a female build. 

And to top it all off, a horn on her head. 

It was Eri. 

But… something about her wasn’t right. It wasn’t the fact she was pointing a gun at him, but her expression. It was unmoving and empty and dead. 

A second figure crawled down from the rafters in the ceiling. 

“Ah yes, the girl you saved from the Yakuza all those years ago,” the man hissed gleefully. He wore black clothing and had shiny lime hair, the same color as his eyes. “I bet it’s quite a shock to see her here. You see, I have a quite limited quirk, but it’s still very powerful.”

He rested a hand on her shoulder, and she had no reaction. 

“I can exert complete control over a person’s mind… but only with children.”

He raised a finger in Izuku’s direction, and the hero was paralyzed in shock and horror. 

“Now, kill him.”

“Midoriya’s in trouble, I can hear him!” Kyoka shouted as she sent five villains tumbling down the hall with the force of her vibrations. “You’ve gotta go help!”

“But you need me here!” Hagakure retorted, knocking a villain out via a pressure point on the neck before they could get to Kyoka. “He’s the number one hero, can’t he take care of himself?!”

“There’s something wrong with his heart rate,” Kyoka replied. “It’s too fast, too agitated. Something’s wrong! I can hold these guys off for long enough for you to help him! He’s two halls down from us!”

After a second more of reluctance, Hagakure agreed. “Okay, I’ll be back as quick as I can!”

For someone who was essentially quirkless, Katsuki was having a heck of a time defeating the head of The Essential. 

“Why won’t you just die!!” he barked in aggravation as another one of her pawns jumped in his attack path. 

“Oh, I will die, we all will very soon!” she exclaimed in delight, dodging some rubble Katsuki blasted in her direction. 

“What the hell is wrong with you! Open your damn eyes to see how fricking crazy you are!!”

“Why don’t you open your eyes to see how this cruel world doesn’t deserve to be lived in!”

“That doesn’t even make sense!!”

This time, Katsuki blasted her pre-supplied pawn out of the way, before sending a huge explosion of fire and heat in her direction. She was sent flying backwards, wearing a manic grin the whole time. 

He was towering over her, palm pointed at her face, before she had the chance to get up. “Don’t move unless you wanna face-full of fire,” he threatened. 

Her smile only widened, and she pressed her forehead against his palm. “Go ahead, do it. I don’t mind if all my flesh gets burned away.”

Katsuki scoffed. “Your head isn’t screwed on right. Give me the nuclear launch keys before you do something you’ll regret.”

“Even if I could give them up, I wouldn’t. You’d have to kill me first.”

He narrowed his eyes. “So someone else has them. Who?”

She only smiled and began humming a tune to herself, perfectly content in her situation. Katsuki swore. 

Izuku’s head whirled in confusion. He couldn’t attack Eri! But she was attacking him!

The villain cackled as he desperately dodged a flurry of bullets the girl sent at him. If he was the one controlling her, then he had to take him out first. 

But every time he tried to get close, Eri jumped in his way or shot a bullet in his path. The hallway was too tight to maneuver around with a high percentage of One For All!

The villain decided to talk as the altercation continued. “The first time we met, I was using a different child, one who is also close to you. That one you had saved from the villain attack during your summer camp, if I recall correctly.”

“Kota?!” Izuku questioned angrily. 

“Yes, that’s the one!” the man answered in a tone much too happy for Izuku. “The kids I control can’t remember much of anything when I let them go, except in their nightmares. If he’s been acting strange lately, that would be why. Using people who could never have a thought about harming you works very effectively, I’ve found.”

As Izuku’s anger boiled over, some things spilled out of his mouth he would later have wished he never said. “You monster! Controlling kids?! Forcing them to do terrible things that haunt their dreams!? No wonder you’re okay siding with an organization whose goal is to kill everyone!!”

The man clenched his jaw, his gleeful demeanor melting away. “Monster, really? That’s the best you could come up with!? How about pedophile, eh?! I used my quirk once as an adult before joining The Essential, to stop a couple jocks from bullying one of my students! Then soon that’s what everyone is calling me!! And I get fired from my job as a teacher for nothing!!”

A sob broke out of the person’s chest, and the sound was so sudden, so real, it caught Izuku by surprise. 

A bullet blasted into his forearm. 

And with his shout of pain, the villain’s smile was back. “That’s why I’m okay with the world burning to the ground!! People like you would never understand!”

Izuku then heard a light scuffling sound next to him, so while dodging the next round of bullets, he answered with, “Even if all your old students get burned down along with it? Even if the student you defended gets hurt anyway, now because of you instead of those bullies?”

The villain faltered in hesitation, and Eri stilled for a second, which gave Hagakure the opening she needed to hit a pressure point in the man’s neck to knock him out. 

The man slumped to the ground, unconscious. 

And so did Eri. 

Izuku dashed forward and caught her. “Thank you, Hagakure.”

“No problem.” She already had cuffs on the villain. “But I’ve got to go back to help Jiro now!”

“Okay! I’m gonna go to the central room to stop these people once and for all.”

“Try not to die a second time, please.”

“Yeah, I’ll try.”

The number of villains in the main bunker was more than Izuku had been anticipating. Ignoring the pulsing pain from his shoulder and arm, he made his presence known, ready to fight. 

“Koryo, stop!”

The older lady froze in her action of placing the first launch key into its keyhole, turning her wary eyes over to the young hero. “You know my name. How?”

“I’ve fought you before.”

A towering, formidable villain with a cocky look on his face scoffed. “Want me to take this guy out?”

“No,” Koryo decided. “The world will end momentarily. We might as well let him explain.”

“You’re only saying that to stall for time,” Izuku responded, “because you don’t want this to happen.”

“And whatever could’ve put that silly idea into your head,” she laughed, fake as a politician. “I’m the one who started this whole thing to begin with.”

“Yes, and you regret it immensely. You wish you had never caused Koritsu to fall into the down spiral of her quirk, Obsession. In fact, she’s a little obsessed with you too, because you’re quirkless, right? She decided to attack today because it’s your birthday.”

The way she paled was answer enough, and he saw a little more belief start to creep into her expression. 

“You wished you would’ve talked to her, convinced her to take a different path, instead of letting it grow out of hand like this. But now, you’re getting a day full of destruction and death as your birthday present.”

The large villain from before stepped forward. “Why don’t you shut your trap,” he palmed his fist, which started glowing a blinding color, “or I’ll shut it for you.”

“No…” Koryo said faintly, waving him off, while he gave her a puzzled look. “He… might be right. Maybe- this might be a bad idea.”

Izuku felt like shouting ‘it took you this long to figure that out!?’ But he didn’t, because this was the time for kind words and soft persuasion. 

“There are other ways to achieve your goals of getting recognized,” he promised, “but not like this. I’ve seen how it turns out, and know this, it’s not something any of you would truly want.”

“You can’t understand our situations.” That was the boy with black hair, whose sister had a quirk that severely impaired her memory. “You don’t know what it’s like to be thrown off to the side and regarded as useless!”

Izuku held back his childhood experiences, stopping them from slipping off of his tongue. He could understand, but that wasn’t something he could share. 

Koryo stared at him, curiosity piqued. “What do you mean, you’ve seen it.”

He gritted his teeth. “I’d tell you, but not right now. Just know, you don’t want this, which is something you’ve told me yourself. Please, give up the keys, and peacefully turn yourselves over.”

The other villains in the room looked towards their leader for instruction, fully expecting an immediate order to kill the hero. Instead, she frowned at the ground, contemplating her options. 

Then her head snapped up to Izuku, and she announced, “I’m calling this off. We should never have come here.”

The hero’s mouth spread into a smile, and all the villains looked at her in unadulterated shock. 

“...what?” the black haired boy asked. 

“You heard me. We’re leaving,” she reaffirmed, turning to exit. 

The bigger villain blocked her path. “No. We’re gonna finish what we started.”

With that, all the shock began to give way to resentment and anger. Koryo looked around worriedly as the group’s attitude towards their leader shifted. “We’re not continuing with the plan!” she insisted. 

“Then you’re not our leader anymore!” another villain exclaimed. 

They started advancing upon her, closing her in, and real fear crept into her expression. That was, until a flash of lightning, and Izuku was standing by the door with Koryo. 

“Get out of here!” he ordered. “I’ll take care of this!”

After a moment of hesitance, she listened. Izuku turned back to the villains, six or seven of them, but they were no doubt some of the strongest in the organization. 

This was then proven by the bulky villain lighting his palms up in a blazing energy, and shooting Izuku both an arrogant smirk and a thick beam of pure power. “I’ve never met anyone who’s been able to beat me in a fight! Let’s see if you’re any different!”

The beam destroyed the wall behind Izuku, who’d just been able to get away with a graze on his cheek. Even as he turned up One For All’s percentage, he could tell the power this villain held was undeniably strong. 

Well, he’d try to keep his promise of not dying. 

“Guys. Guys! Midoriya’s in trouble! Again!!”

At the sound of Jiro’s message, Ochako’s chest constricted, freezing her lungs. 

The hospital had been secured, and the heroes were rounding up the few Essential members left. No patients had been injured, no heroes killed. Everyone was safe. 

So, in other words, they didn’t need Ochako there. 

Her legs started carrying her away before she even had a chance to think about it. He was only a few miles away, so she just had to push her quirk as far as it could go. 

She shouted into her earpiece, “I’m on my way!!”

Chapter Text

Kyoka’s heart pounded in her ears, and she propelled the rhythm into her speakers to blast away her pursuers. All the commotion coming from the central area had died down a couple minutes ago, and Midoriya still hadn’t responded over comms. 

At least her worry made her quirk stronger so she could deal with the villains quicker, but she’d much rather know her friend was safe. 

When she arrived on the scene, no one was standing. People were littered all over the floor, their chests rising and falling in a gentle pattern, ensuring they were alive. 

Except for one person, who laid motionless at the center of the room. 

Kyoka slid to the side of Midoriya’s body, eyes wide in panic as she pressed her earphone jack up against his neck, listening for a pulse. 

The only heartbeat she could find was her own. 

Her pulse quickened dramatically as she realized the body in front of her truly was lifeless. She immediately began chest compressions, screaming into the comms, “We’ve got a big problem!!”

Ochako’s breath tore through her throat as she panted heavily, almost to the building where the heroes were facing off against The Essential. She just had to reach Izuku, to help him against whatever he was facing. 

In the dull buzz of action that adrenaline provided, she had made it to the building and had flown through the doors in what felt like less than a minute. The halls blurred by as she sped through them. 

“We’ve got a big problem!!”

Jiro’s voice spurred her on faster, and she paid no mind to her aching limbs or twisting stomach. Any physical discomfort was irrelevant when saving someone was on her mind. Especially Izuku. 

This fierce determination flitted off the moment she saw him lying lifeless on the cold ground. 

All her senses seemed to malfunction, as all she could see was his torpid body, and her ears blocked out Jiro’s cries for help. Her emotions only relayed one feeling, over and over: dread. 

She couldn’t go through losing him. Not again. 

She moved numbly over to his side, before desperately trying to wake him up. Through Jiro’s chest compressions and calls for aid over the comms, her focus remained on his face as she searched for any minuscule response. 

He looked as dead as when he’d first passed months ago. 

Tears pricked in her eyes, and it wasn’t long before the hope his return had filled her with began to seep back out of her heart. Her head drooped down to rest on his shoulder, and her body began to shake with sobs. 

With every tear that escaped her eye and rolled down her cheek to make his shoulder damp, she felt colder, sadder, and more lonely. 

Then she felt a hand on her back. 

“Hey, you don’t have to cry.”

Her eyes flew open as she sucked in a sudden breath of shock, lifting her head. She hadn’t even noticed that Jiro had stopped her emergency aid to stare wide-eyed at the reanimated hero. 

Ochako’s tears quickly became ones of relief and happiness. 

She leaned forward to give Izuku a tight hug, but sprang away when he winced and hissed in pain. “I think some of my ribs might be broken.”

“That means I was doing chest compressions right!” Jiro retorted. 

He blinked confusedly. “Chest compressions? ...oh!” He pointed at a man a few feet to his left. “He has the power to make someone’s heart stop beating by touching them, but since he was only able to tap me I was only out for a minute or two.”

“Out?” Ochako narrowed her eyes. “We thought you were dead!”

While Jiro told everyone it was alright over comms, Izuku smiled cheesily, “...sorry?”

Ochako’s face melted, and she smiled gently, eyes glossing over again. “It’s okay. I’m just happy you didn’t die this time, and the rest of the world didn’t either!”

He sighed in relief; it was all finally over. All those torturous months of isolation, and constant worrying about failure. 

Police would arrive in a few minutes to arrest all The Essential members, and medics would come with them to treat Izuku and any others injured. But right then, in that moment, Izuku just basked in the sweet release of knowing everything was going to be okay. 

He could hear the swarm of reporters through the wall, chattering and buzzing like a cloud of wasps, ready to sting with their questions. Izuku loved being a hero, helping people and providing them a brighter future, but gosh did he hate press conferences. 

Not to say he was bad at them- quite the opposite. He was a natural at calming the masses with his real smiles and honest words, it was just the press’s method of getting that information out of him was rather staggering. 

As he mentally braced himself for the onslaught of questions he was about to experience, repeating his rehearsed story in his head, his phone dinged. 

The text was from Ochako. “Don’t be nervous, I know you’ll do great!”

He swore she could read his thoughts sometimes. 

Izuku pulled in a deep breath and released it in an effort to ease some of his anxiety. The vestiges were sending him reassurances too, but they understood emerging from his consciousness would only serve to distract him. 

Tsukauchi and Aizawa were already out there in front of the mob of reporters, relaying the events and battles that had transpired recently. Izuku had been spotted being carted off to a hospital after said battles, so the public was eager for an explanation as to the former number one’s reappearance. 

An explanation the former number one was to give himself. 

A second deep breath was as ineffective as the first one, so he resorted to just steel his emotions and still his thoughts until the moment he was called out. A moment that came quickly, both fortunately and unfortunately. 

The second he stepped out onto the stage, he was berated with camera flashes and pummeled with questions as the sea of reporters rose up to interrogate him. He almost went blind for a second with the overwhelming brightness of it all, and his eardrums rattled from the noise. 

Here he was, the number one hero, in the flesh. It wasn’t a fake or a hoax. He truly had returned. 

Across the nation, people’s worlds stopped to zero in all their attention on the revived hero. Their symbol of hope. 

Izuku numbed himself to it all, plastering on a small smile as he stiffly walked across the stage and found his seat next to the other two. He just had to survive the next fifteen minutes. 

Tsukauchi called for quiet, which had no success in calming the crowd. They just couldn’t keep their mouths shut. Izuku clenched his jaw; this was ridiculous. 

“Could you all let the detective speak?” he requested, kind yet firm voice carrying across the hall. 

The people went dead silent at the first sound of his voice. He sighed in relief. 

“Thank you, Midoriya,” Tsukauchi said, grateful to finally be heard. “The only people we’ll be accepting questions from are those at the central microphone in front of the stage. One question per reporter. Anyone else, we ask that you remain quiet.”

“If it gets to the volume level it was at just before, we’re leaving,” Aizawa added. 

“That too,” Tsukauchi confirmed, and Izuku nodded in agreement. 

Small murmurings rose up throughout the hall, but none of them loud enough to put Aizawa’s threat into effect. Izuku turned his eyes to the first reporter at the microphone: a man with horns protruding from his wild brown hair. 

“Until a few days ago, everyone thought that you had been murdered in a small-scale robbery. There was a funeral, and memorials were made. But now you’re here before us, living and breathing like nothing even happened. As I’m sure most of the world would like to know, how are you back from the dead?”

Izuku smiled politely as he readied his story in his head. “I did, in fact, die in that small-scale robbery, but only for a few minutes.”

He went on to explain how he’d been hit by a quirk that stopped his heart and breathing, which wasn’t technically a lie, it just hadn’t happened months ago. He said he’d been in a coma for an extended period of time, and had only recently woken and recovered. His status hadn’t been made public, due to the doctor’s doubt of his survival. 

“We decided to use my supposed death to our advantage against The Essential. They weren’t expecting the former number one to show up, so with surprise on our side we were able to thwart their plans,” he finished his story, which had been fabricated by Nezu himself. 

“Everything he just said is true,” Tsukauchi confirmed. With his quirk, nobody would doubt a word that had been uttered. 

But still, Izuku felt bad lying to the world like this, so he let his next words ring out true and genuine. “I hated not being able to help people for that long period of time, but now that I’ve recovered, I can’t wait to get back to protecting the city. I understand these last several months have been extremely difficult on everyone, so I promise to make up for my absence. To all the people watching this, you don’t have to be afraid anymore, ‘cause I’m here.”

He gave the world a kind smile, his trademark real and confident grin. 

That was something that differentiated him from his mentor. All Might’s grins were flashy and extravagant, covering up any fear or weakness, making them fake as well. 

But Izuku, he was humble and down to earth. He was relatable. His smiles weren’t forcibly forged; they came out of the genuine want in his heart to help. His smiles admitted he wasn’t perfect, but still promised to strive to protect everyone to the best of his ability. 

So when he smiled out at the crowd, and to the watching world, that was when the people finally felt like it was going to be alright again. That was when that long forgotten peace returned to their lives, and they at last had a reason to smile. 

The air was cooler up here, more refreshing. More freeing. 

Izuku filled his lungs with this air, and as he exhaled he felt any lingering stressors became insignificant. 

“Feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

Izuku turned to see the glowing white form of Yoichi, who was gazing serenely at the undestroyed city from the top of the skyscraper. The ocean could be seen from that high, sparkling in the distance. 

“Yeah, it does,” Izuku answered, his voice being the only thing filling the peaceful silence. “I’m happy leaving that horrid chapter of my life behind.”

Yoichi sat down beside the young hero, dangling his legs over the edge like he was doing. “While I agree, don’t dismiss how you’ve grown and what you’ve learned from your experiences. Good does come out of tribulation.”

“What I’ve learned?” Izuku turned and quirked an eyebrow at the vestige. “I’ve learned that you can turn One For All off!”

“Oh… you remember that, huh?”

“What, you thought I’d just forget!? I just haven’t had stress levels low enough to talk to you about it until now!”

Yoichi just smiled and sighed. “Yeah, us vestiges can cut off your access to One For All if we want to. And you have to admit, it turned out for the better that we did!”

Izuku only grumbled, thinking back to how it had gotten him to admit his identity to his friends. “Still, I’d rather you not do that again… please.”

Yoichi chuckled. “We’ll keep that in mind the next time we’re considering it.”

A disturbance in the air and silence behind Izuku had him turning his head to investigate, but he relaxed once he spotted Ochako. Yoichi faded away so the two could talk. 

“I saw on HeroNet that you were here and wanted to come check on you,” she offered as an explanation of her arrival. 

“Oh, thanks.” He gave a warm smile as she settled down next to him. “Was just getting some fresh air and peace.”

“Ah, well I guess I ruined your peace and quiet then,” she laughed, and he quickly waved his hands in front of his face to say that wasn’t true. 

“Your company is better than peace and quiet!” he affirmed. 

She responded by leaning into him, her body providing some of the only warmth at such an altitude. He rested his head on top of hers, and the peace he’d felt earlier was only amplified by sharing it with another person. No words were spoken between them, but the feeling of comfort left them knowing they could spend the rest of the day there together. 

The clouds floated by without a care, the breeze stirring the sunrise-lit air as the sun blazed with its constant, reliable warmth. The last speckles of stars were fading from view, and the sky acquired a lighter tint in the time the two spent resting against each other. 

They would have stayed for longer, but of course, the world didn’t work that way. 

The sounds of sirens filtered up through the air and reached their ears, startling their worry and making them alert. 

After a shared glance of determination, they stood up and leapt off the skyscraper together. Lightning danced around his frame, and her fingertips glowed a soft pink. 

They’d conquered all the trials of the past; now it was time for the future. 

Two years later…

Izuku walked past the old memorial, which had a fair amount of flowers ringing its base. The words etched into the plaque there were fading, their definition becoming blurred just as their meaning had become dull and insignificant. 

There was still a statue of him, with his smiling features, but it now stood for something different than what it had first been built for. It now reminded people of a return, not a departure. 

Izuku wore a hood that heavily shaded his face, since his attributes were once again easily recognized. Even just going to meet Ochako and Eri for ice cream required a disguise. 

The memorial was soon left behind him, just as he’d done with his memories of another world. While his thoughts of his time there couldn’t be forgotten, they could be stored away. It had taken some time and support to accomplish, but he had finally let the guilt and trauma of that time period stop affecting him. 

Now he could look forward to the simple things, like a little outing with Ochako and Eri. He could look forward to their smiles, instead of looking back to the versions of them he’d known. 

A soft grin formed on his lips, as he fidgeted with the new ring on his finger in his pocket. Yeah, he had a lot of things to look forward to.