Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Midoriya Izuku woke up one morning and immediately wished he hadn't.

The problems started with the fact that he was lying outside in a forest, curled up against the base of a tree, and things only got worse from there.

When he sprung to his feet, he leapt higher than he would have expected. When he landed, he was shorter than he would have expected. It was a deeply disconcerting combination. As he looked around in shock, a glance down at himself revealed that he was covered entirely in dark green fur, the same shade as his hair. He could also feel a pair of heavy weights on the top of his head that seemed to shift when he moved; when he felt around for them they turned out to be a pair of rabbit ears. He gulped audibly, and he was sure if anyone else could see him he'd look like a character in a gag manga, someone in a four panel comic who'd just found a spider in their bed.

He turned to look behind himself, and sure enough he had a fluffy white tail. That was when he realised that his boxers had fallen off and his shirt was hanging down far further than it normally would have. While he still had his sleep clothes, they were sized to his original human form. He was at peace with the fact that he was never going to be a giant but it seemed that he had been shrunk yet further; he would guess his height at somewhere around four feet. He had, to his great relief, retained his muscle mass. The end result was that he was broad enough to keep wearing his t-shirt, but his boxers were a lost cause. At the very least with his new diminutive form his shirt was more like a tunic, and in any case his newfound fur covered anything that would have been embarrassing - but it was the principle of the thing. Public decency laws had been relaxed to an extent in the wake of quirks and mutations, but they did still exist and he didn't want to push his luck.

When he did his best to control the rising tide of panic and reach inside himself, he was deeply relieved to feel the warmth of One For All lodged in his chest where it belonged. If he'd been dragged to the other side of the country; if he'd been dragged to another country altogether, whether or not his body was the same as the one he'd gone to sleep in the previous night he was sure he could find some way to work things out.

For want of any better solution, Izuku picked a direction and started walking. He found that his altered body leant itself to a kind of long, loping stride and before long he had picked up speed until he was fairly running through the forest, as fast as he could without the use of his quirk. He had always been the type to prefer doing something to not, so the idea of getting help that little bit faster suited him just fine. It occurred to him in a distant way that running through an unknown forest would be a good way to trip over something, but at the same time his strange new body seemed preternaturally suited to movement. Whatever had transformed him had supercharged his tendency to get up and go, and so go he did.

The forest was beautiful. Perhaps it took an odd sense of priorities to appreciate the loveliness of nature when he had no idea where he was or why he looked the way he did, but it was undeniable. Having lived in Musutafu his entire life, and having been a little distracted during the brief training camp with the Wild Wild Pussycats he hadn't often had the chance to just enjoy being in the great outdoors. He was glad to take the opportunity, even if it came in unusual circumstances. Eventually the forest thinned out, and he could see signs of human life. On the hills in the distance, he could see houses surrounded by open fields – farms, he realised after a moment. He’d have to knock on someone’s door and ask to borrow a phone, like a character in a period drama.

He crested a small rise, not really worth calling a hill, and saw a few houses clustered closer together around a stretch of unpaved road. For want of a better goal made his way towards them, glad to be making some kind of progress. As he got closer, he saw what seemed to be a woman with a rabbit mutation quirk busy in her front garden, which he supposed might be relevant to his own form. If someone was going around turning people into rabbit-people, then that was a strange crime (was it even technically illegal? he wondered, maybe a form of assault) but at least it was a situation he could work to solve. She looked up as he approached, and he waved hello. She greeted him with a gentle smile, and Izuku was immediately reminded of his own mom in some intangible way.

"Excuse me, ma'am?” he asked, “Are we anywhere near Musutafu?"

She pulled off her gardening gloves and wiped her forehead before replying, "I don't believe I know where that is. This is Floral Forest - I suppose you can guess how it got the name. But - good heavens, never mind that. Are you alright, sweetheart?"

"Sure, why wouldn't I be?"

The taller woman gestured broadly up and down him, "Well for one thing you look like you fell out of a tree. For another, I'm sure that shirt doesn't fit you."

He looked down at himself once more, forced to concede that she had a point, "I... it's gonna sound crazy if I say it."

"Try me. I'm friends with Sonic the Hedgehog, I've heard a crazy story or two in my time."

"Well when I went to bed last night I was a human in a UA dormitory, and now I'm a rabbit-person in a forest and my clothes don't fit."

The woman absorbed his tale for a moment before continuing, "What's you-ayy?"

"UA, the hero school in Musutafu. Uh, that's in Japan." Her face remained worryingly blank, "Uh, Japan the country?" he tried, feeling pessimistic.

"Sorry, honey, I don't know much about human countries."

"Human countries?" queried Izuku, his heart sinking even further.

"Well, yes."

"I must be further away from home than I thought."

"Oh you poor dear! Here I am keeping you talking, while you've had a horrible shock! Please come in, I'll get you some tea and we can think about how to get you home." She bundled him inside gently but irresistibly, and lead him towards a pleasant sitting room. She sat him down on the couch and then seated herself beside him, close enough to be a comfort but not so close as to crowd him.

"You believe me?" asked Izuku as he gazed around. The rabbit woman's cottage was comfortably appointed, and it appeared that she took good care of it. A photograph above the mantelpiece showed the woman with another, much younger rabbit-person; presumably her daughter. Another showed the two of them with a humanoid robot, which assured Izuku that whatever else he at least hadn't been sent back in time. Normally he would have dismissed that idea as an impossibility; given the circumstances he was reluctant to rule anything out.

"Like I said, I've heard a crazy thing or two from Sonic and his whole," the woman waved a hand in the air while she tried to think of a word, "ensemble. Besides, nobody but a human would say rabbit-person. Everyone else would just say rabbit."

"Oh goodness, was that rude? I'm sorry."

"Not rude, just something about the way they talk. Uh, the way you talk. Gosh, now I'm the one being rude. Anyway, you just wait here and get your bearings. Tea first, then questions." She bustled off and from another room he could hear the sound of a kettle and a radio playing upbeat jazz.

She returned in short order with two cups of tea and a plate of neatly cut sandwiches. The tea was nice, and by that point Izuku was willing to count whatever blessings he could get his furry green hands on.

"So, let's start figuring out where we are. First things first, my name is Vanilla the Rabbit. What's yours, sweetie?"

"Midoriya Izuku."

She nodded, "Well, that certainly sounds like a human-style name. So, Midoriya, do you remember anything unusual yesterday? Especially any strange items or substances you might have encountered?" She had stumbled a little over his name, but as the look of her home was so western Izuku decided not to worry about it. Given she had never heard of Japan, she was clearly doing the best she could.

"No ma'am. No strange devices, no transformation quirks that I know of."

"I see. This kind of all-over transformation… I’m sorry to ask, but did the metal virus reach the human countries? I find it so hard to keep up with international news these days." A pall had come over her face, as if she were referring to something horrible. Izuku decided to be glad he had no idea what she was talking about.

The way she had phrased the question stuck out in his mind, and he decided now was as good a time as any to find out what she meant. "I'm sorry ma'am, when you say human countries... as opposed to what? Isn't that all countries?"

"Well, yes. The human countries and the mobian islands."

"I'm afraid I don't understand. What's mobian?"

"Why, I am. So are you, as of this morning."

“Now hold on a second”, he replied, “Just because I’m in another country now doesn’t mean I’ve emigrated. I’m still a Japanese citizen, I have my passport back in the dorm.”

Vanilla looked truly perplexed. “Emigrated? No, honey, mobian” she enunciated and gestured broadly to her own face, “Of course you’re not in another country, you’re in the islands.”

“But… can I see a map?”

“Of course. Gemerl! Could you be a dear and bring the atlas?”

The robot from the photos hanging on her wall stepped through the door, carrying a coffee table atlas. Izuku was no expert, but it looked more advanced than the ones at UA, moving more smoothly and carrying an indefinable air of intelligence with it, as if it was actually alive and not just running a program. Maybe it is, thought Izuku after a moment and he waved hello as it set down the book. The robot waved back, and left the room.

Vanilla opened the book to a double-page spread of a world map and said “Now, let’s take a look and see if we can find where you’ve come from.”

Izuku looked down at the map, and his heart tried to leap and sink at the same time. Even at a glance, it was clearly not his home. He was the first human to go to another world since before the dawn of quirks. “This isn’t my world. Or – no, perhaps I’ve been moved forwards in time, so far forwards that continental drift has fundamentally changed the layout of planet earth.”

“How far would you have to travel in time for that to happen?”

“Millions of years.” He wasn’t actually sure if it was merely millions or hundreds of millions, but he consoled himself that such knowledge of geology was not normally relevant to his daily life.

“Oh! Well no, in that case it’s probably the other world thing. I’ve never heard of time travel sending someone that far.”

He was almost as stunned by her casual tone of voice as he was by his own situation. “Is time travel a known technology here?” he asked.

Vanilla put her teacup down to think about the question before answering “Not in the sense that everyone can just pop back to last tuesday whenever they like, but it has been known to happen. However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone going more than a few hundred years, and he’s something of a special case.”

“And… other planets?”

“No, they – gosh, I suppose they must be planets, mustn’t they? If you mean in the sense of rockets and spaceships, I don’t know much about all that. But there are other worlds than this, or maybe it’s more like another version of how the world could have turned out if things had gone differently.”

“That’s incredible!” He knew scientists had been speculating for years about alternate universes and branching timelines. To have proof of it, in such an undeniable form, was enough to make him wish he had his phone with him to document everything. He’d have to see about getting a notebook and pen whenever they were in town.

“Well, yes, I was quite startled the first time I heard of it. As a matter of fact, I have a friend who lives in one of those other worlds, and it just so happens she’s here in our world – ah, my world, sorry – to visit. We can speak to her, perhaps she’ll have an idea of how to get you home.”

Some time later, Izuku would be amazed to learn that this visitor was a princess. For the time being, all he could do was sit in a kind woman’s living room, a stranger in an alien world without the faintest idea of how he would get back home.

It was a nice enough place to have his understanding of the cosmos shattered, at least.

Chapter Text

“We’ll have to head into town”, said Vanilla when they had both finished their tea, “We won’t get any closer to getting you back home by sitting around here.”

It seemed like as good an idea as any, so Izuku agreed. Soon enough, they were ready to head out together.

“It’s lucky Cream’s already with her friends”, mused Vanilla as they stepped out into the sunshine, “Saves me having to find someone to look after her for the afternoon.”

“Is that your daughter?”, he asked, “I, uh, saw her in your photos.”

“Yes. She’s a lovely girl, and I’m sure if she was here she’d be excited to help however she could. But, given the circumstances, I’m not sure how much that would be. Probably for the best she’s spared the disappointment, I suppose.”

Around the side of the house there was a garage he hadn’t noticed. Vanilla’s car was small, round and yellow, and looked vaguely European. Vanilla beeped her key fob, and it came to life with a gentle electronic hum. When they got in, Izuku was relieved to find that seatbelts seemed to work the same way across worlds – given the sheer strangeness of his situation, he was willing to cling to whatever brief shreds of normalcy he could get his hands on.

As the car started, the radio came on. “Welcome back to K-PND. Our topic of debate today – human-mobian relationships. How much of a height difference is too much?”

“There’s that word again, mobian. What does it mean?” asked Izuku.

Vanilla sighed and muttered “And I thought this conversation was complicated when it was Cream” He didn’t think he had been supposed to hear that. “Anyway”, she continued, “Mobians are, well, people who look like you and me. That is to say, not rabbits specifically, but pretty much anyone who isn’t a human.”

“Is it this world’s name for mutants?”

“Mutants? Is that what you call us in your world?”

Izuku quailed as he realised how that had sounded, “OK, so, uh, mutants, or more properly heteromorphs, are people who no longer resemble a baseline human. Anyone who is a baseline human, or who at least still resembles one is called an orthomorph.”

“Baseline being...”

For some reason, the first person to pop into his mind was a basketball player. He didn’t even follow the sport. “Uh, any of the examples I could give would be people you wouldn’t know.”

“I see. And why is the language all designed from the assumption that a baseline human is the default mode of being and anyone else is strange and needs to justify their presence in the conversation?”

Izuku stared at her for a moment.

“What? Just because I’m a hausfrau doesn’t mean I don’t know a microaggression when I see one.”

“No, it’s just – I go to a school for heroes, and nobody ever talks about this stuff! I never get a chance to discuss it with anyone!”

“Hm! If I had your school’s address, they’d get a sternly worded letter about their responsibilities to the coming generation.”

“But to answer your question, it’s not meant to exclude anyone. For a long time, baseline humans were all there was as far as real sapience goes. I guess some animals can learn to communicate, I dunno, I mean only humans in terms of building houses and wearing clothes. But that all changed with a glowing baby born in China…”

He gave her a brief overview of the birth of superhuman society; how meta-abilities had become quirks and how quirked individuals had become the majority of the human race. In more recent years, how those with variant bodies had come to be called heteromorphs, or mutants in casual conversation, and how superheroes had gone from the stuff of comic books and movies to real life with all the glitz, glamour and celebrity sleaze that came with it.

“I see”, she said by the end, “And back in your world you were one of these baseline humans?”

“Yeah. More baseline than most, actually, I didn’t even have a quirk until about a year ago.”

“Oh? From what you’ve said, it sounds like most people have them.”

“Yeah, I, uh…”

“I’m sorry, sweetie, you don’t have to answer that. I know how children can be sometimes.”

He was silent for a long moment until the car suddenly jolted as if it had hit something. Izuku looked back to see what it was until another jolt came, and then another. He was reminded of the sonic shockwaves his classmate Jirou could produce, and looked ahead once more to see if he could find the source of them.

What he saw was, of all things, a giant robot stepping into view from behind a tall, forested hill. It was painted red, and its torso suggested a round belly – given its bulk, Izuku couldn’t help but be reminded of a weightlifter. Not a bodybuilder or a celebrity, nor even any of his classmates, but one of those people who sculpts themselves for pure power at the expense of any conventional sense of aesthetics. It bristled with missiles, and its face was designed with a leering grin.

“CRUSH. KILL. DESTROY. CRUSH. KILL. DESTROY.”, repeated the robot, distorted voice over loudspeaker like some demented mantra.

Beside him Vanilla looked horrified. “Not again”, she whispered.

It moved with surprising grace for something of its size. As it trod over hills and trees, it never once seemed to be in danger of losing its balance. He looked over to trace the direction it was walking in, and saw it was headed for the same town they were. Before even asking Vanilla to stop the car, Izuku unbuckled his seatbelt and wound down the window.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“What does it look like? I’m gonna go stop that robot.” He clambered out of the window and set into a run, dodging other cars streaming away from it with ease. He didn’t know how much to attribute to his hero training and how much to his new rabbit form, but he found himself avoiding obstacles with as much ease as Sero or Tsuyu. Before long he was standing before it, and he found that it wasn’t much prettier up close.

He leapt up, One For All and his new rabbit legs combining to launch him into the air like a firework as he yelled “Floral Forest SMAAASH!”

His foot plowed through the robot’s midsection, metal tearing around him though he could barely feel it. As he passed clear out the other side he kept the momentum of the kick going, spinning into a forward position and landing in a run, as if he had done nothing more serious than jump off a low wall. He would have to thank Mina whenever he got back home, he was really learning a lot about mobility from her.

He spun on his heel and looked back up at the robot. It was still on its feet, but clearly the damage was telling against it. Its movements were jerky and stilted, like an actor in a robot costume on a cheap sentai show. As he readied himself to take another run at it, a blue shape sped past him in a blur and crashed through the robot’s head. It smoked, sparked and then fell to the ground with a crash that was more of a shockwave than a sound.

The blue shape zipped onto the fallen robot’s torso, and when it stopped Izuku could see that it was another person, with a full body mutation that he couldn’t identify. He stopped himself – the rules were different here, and maybe this was another of those mobians Vanilla had mentioned. Another, yellow-orange and too distant for him to make out any real details, flew over the horizon and hovered near the blue one. They seemed to be talking – no, chatting. Even from that distance, he could see that the pair were totally relaxed.

He headed over to them at a light jog, eager to meet this world’s equivalent to pro heroes. With a glance back to the road he could see Vanilla had parked and was heading over on foot at a more sedate pace. She seemed unconcerned, so he supposed whoever this pair were, she at least knew of them.

As he approached, he heard the blue one complain “I can’t believe there are still rogue egg-bots just wandering around. How long’s it been since the war?”

“Weapons stick around for a while”, he said, by way of a greeting, “Back where I come from they’re still digging bombs up in the Israel-Palestine DMZ, and nobody’s fired a shot in anger there in over 60 years.” He didn’t normally have much knowledge of international affairs but there had been something about it in the news the previous day, lots of dignitaries and flags at half mast. You always knew it was one of the serious public events when each nation’s top pro heroes were in civilian wear, not costumes.

“I don’t know where that is”, said the other, who appeared to be a fox-person, “But yeah, you have a point. If people in a hundred years are still finding Eggman’s robots here and there, that’s unfortunately not too surprising.”

“Oh, sorry, it’d be a bit of a long story. I’m Deku, I helped take down the, uh robot?”

“I saw!” nodded the blue one with a grin, “That was a pretty impressive kick. You do this sort of thing before?”

“This is only the second robot this big, but yeah. It went a lot smoother this time. You need help getting the wounded to safety?”

The two of them shook their heads, “We have some other friends covering that”, said the fox, “but thanks for the offer.”

“Yeah!” agreed the blue one, “Anyway, I’m Sonic the Hedgehog and this is my buddy Tails.”

“Didn’t you say your name was Midoriya?” asked Vanilla, who had at last reached them.

“Oh! Uh, Deku’s my working name. Sorry, got caught up in the moment-” he stopped as the realisation hit him like All Might, “I don’t have my licence with me.”

“Licence?” asked the other three, simultaneously.

He frantically patted himself down as if it would fall out of pockets he didn’t have, even as he knew it was lying safe and sound in his dorm room, “I guess at least if I have to go to jail, it’s not one I sent anyone to. That’d just be awkward. I should probably send Muscular an apology card about his eye, now I think about it.”

“Calm down! Nobody’s going to jail!”

He nodded, “You’re right. We’ll just tell everyone you did the whole thing, and I only stumbled on it later. It worked for Stain, it’ll work again now.”

Sonic shook his head and replied, “The only thing we’ll tell anyone is you helped take down an egg-bot before it could rampage through town, and you deserve a pat on the back and your photo in the paper. Why would you get arrested for helping?”

“Also, why does your t-shirt say pajamas?” asked Tails.

“Because I’m a comedic genius and all my t-shirts are hilarious”, replied Izuku, “But never mind that right now. You’re sure I won’t get in hot water for involving myself in the whole robot situation?”

“Positive. Is this something to do with that licence you were so worried about?”

“You can tell them the full story”, said Vanilla, “No matter what, these two have always seen something weirder.”

Izuku decided to trust her, and gave the pair a brief summary of his own situation; other worlds, transformations and all.

By the time he was done, the strange duo looked determined and ready for action.

“Right!” said Sonic, “I guess we’d probably better get you to a hospital, make sure you don’t have any, I dunno, dimension goop or anything on you.”

“Also germs”, commented Tails.

“Eh, he looks clean enough. Anyway, we can head straight there while Vanilla, how about you find somewhere in town to park and then meet us there?”

“And once we’ve got everything squared away at the hospital, we can see about getting you back home”, agreed Tails.

“You can trust these two”, said Vanilla, “They’ve helped us all out of some real jams. In fact, this sort of thing is right up their alley.”

“Are you sure you’ll be OK alone?” he asked, “What if another of those robots comes along?”

She shook her head, “If there were more of them, they would have shown up by now. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

“OK then yeah, great. I’ll see you in, I dunno, whenever we get there.”

She giggled. “Be seeing you.”

“Now”, he said as he turned back to this world’s two heroes, “Who the heck is going around building giant death-bots anyway?”

As the three headed into town, and the surrounding buildings grew both larger and more frequent, they explained their problems with would-be tyrant, robotic genius and all around menace Dr Eggman. The strange duo fell over each other in their enthusiasm to list his many crimes and their adventures in stopping him, until Izuku found himself wondering how they could possibly find time to do all that and still have any kind of social life or hobbies outside of end-of-the-world scenarios. And he’d thought he was busy!

He thought things were going pretty well, until a shadow fell over him. He looked up, briefly wondering if it was another robot, but the truth turned out to be far stranger. Soaring towards him in a beautiful parabolic arc came a car, a mid-sized family sedan in a sensible grey-blue. Izuku wasn’t sure how he took the details in while simultaneously scrambling for cover, but the sight of the car hurtling through the air etched itself into his mind with perfect clarity.

It collided with the road a little way ahead of him, and when he looked in the direction it had come from he saw another hedgehog floating through the air, staring at him with an intense scowl upon his face. Izuku had been threatened and intimidated by some real world-class brutes and lowlifes (and his former friend Kacchan) and whoever this white hedgehog was, he could glare with the best of them. An eerie pale glow surrounded the hedgehog’s hand, and Izuku cast his eyes around on alert for the next improptu projectile coming his way.

“What the heck do you think you’re doing?” shouted Sonic, which Izuku figured was a reasonable question.

“I have to take him down!” replied the newcomer, “For the sake of our world’s future, he must be stopped before it’s too late!”

“Silver!” snapped Tails, “What did we say about people who ruined the future?”

The white hedgehog – Silver, apparently – paused in the air grumbled something inaudible.

“What did we say, Silver?”

“...we wait until we have all the details before attacking them.” Izuku was surprised to see a faint blush start to appear on his cheeks. Silver kicked the air and sighed like a schoolboy caught doing something wrong.

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry, guys.”

“Why are you apologising to us? We’re not the ones who got a car thrown at them.”

Izuku popped his head back up from where he had been hiding and waved hello. “I like your eyeliner!”

“There, see, he’s fine – thanks! I like your, uh…” Silver waved a hand vaguely in Izuku’s direction.

“You gonna finish that sentence?” asked Sonic, sounding as if he already knew the answer.

“No, his whole look is kinda trash.”

“I can hear you!” He flopped his big rabbit ears for emphasis.

“Oh! Uh, sorry.”

“What, but you’re not sorry about the car?” asked an increasingly exasperated-sounding Tails.

“Well, if we meet the person whose car it was I’ll be sorry to them.”

Tails shook his head. “No, Jewel is going to be sorry to them. You’re going to explain what happened to Jewel, and you’ll be very sory to her.”

“But Lanolin’s gonna be with her, and then she’ll be mad at me!”

“Well, maybe you shoulda’ thought about that before you went throwing cars at people.”

“It was a good throw, if that helps you feel any better”, commented Izuku.

“Don’t encourage him!” snapped the other two.

Chapter Text

The further they made their way into town, the less Izuku knew what to make of it all. He wasn’t an architect or an expert on design (despite Midnight’s best efforts) but the buildings seemed to be a mix of designs from the 19^th century through what he thought of as the modern day and on from there into some that looked downright futuristic.

The people around town seemed to recognise his companions, or at least Sonic and Tails, who frequently got friendly waves and greetings from people they passed by. Silver didn’t get called out by name so often, but there were also a minority who seemed to know and appreciate him. Man, thought Izuku, It’s like being on patrol with Endeavor, only it’s a version of Endeavor that people actually like.

The hospital itself was big, white and shiny, and in general looked basically as Izuku would have expected a hospital to look. He was a little surprised by the sheer size of the doors, which reminded him of classroom doors back at UA; he supposed they were probably that big for the same reason. Even on the brief walk through town he’d seen a staggering variety of people, including at last a few humans. He wished Vanilla was still around so he could explain what he’d meant back in the car, but she was otherwise occupied. Sonic briefly introduced him to the woman at the desk, who appeared to be some kind of canine, and she told him to wait in one of the doctors’ offices until someone came to see him.

He thought about his current state and asked “Actually, before we do any of that could I just grab a quick shower?”

“Oh yeah sure, down the hall and to your left. I’ll let the staff know to give you a little while.”

One quick shower later and he was feeling a lot more civilised. He had just sat back down in the empty office and started to kick his heels when the door opened and a doctor stepped in.

The doctor turned out to be a white duck with two-tone hair and tinted glasses balanced on his bill. He was the first mobian guy Izuku had met who actually wore clothes, which seemed promising. Maybe people wouldn’t expect him to go around naked after all. For a doctor to wear a dress shirt and waistcoat instead of a long white coat reminded him of movies he had seen about the early 20^th Century, but then again this place’s sense of aesthetics seemed to be all over the place from the point of view of someone from Earth.

“Ah, you must be this Izuku everyone’s talking about. Full-time student and part-time rabbit, is that right?”

“Yes, sir! But, uh, I didn’t know people were talking about me. From what Ms Vanilla’s told me, I thought dimensional travel was a little passé around here.” He’d learned the word from Aoyama, and was excited to use it in a conversation.

“Vanilla is an acquaintance of Sonic, and there’s the rub” He frowned, and continued “Trouble follows that boy like a bad smell. Outside his, ah, social circle we do take more of an interest in these things.”

Izuku chuckled and shrugged awkwardly. “I, uh, I guess I know how that goes.” Most classes at UA wouldn’t go through as much in three years as 1-A had in the time he had been there.

“Hmm. In any case, I’ll just take a few quick samples from you – hair clippings, things of that nature. How do you feel about needles?”

“I don’t mind blood, if that’s what you mean.”

“Splendid!” the doctor clapped his hands, “I wish all my test subjects could be as cooperative as you.”

“Test subjects?”

“Uh-” the doctor came up short, “Is that what I said? Terribly sorry, I meant the samples will be the test subjects. Now, right arm or left?”

The doctor set about his work quickly and efficiently, and before long he was saying “toodle-oo” as he cheerfully strolled out the door with his arms full of test tubes and bottles. He’d poked, prodded, swabbed and sampled and through the whole affair had kept up a reserved but polite demeanor – not friendly, but agreeable enough. It wasn’t the worst experience Izuku had ever had in a hospital, but when it was over he realised that he was starting to get hungry. Izuku hopped to his feet and wondered what to do now. Just as he had resolved to go to the front desk and let them know everything was done, another doctor entered the room; a badger woman with fur in a rich, dark purple. She was followed by Tails and Sonic, and then a moment later by Silver. By the time he’d entered the room there were no more chairs, so he simply sat floating in midair. He looked comfortable, at least.

Izuku waved her off and said “Oh don’t worry, someone’s come to see me already.”

She quirked an eyebrow and double-checked her clipboard before saying, “That’s odd, I can’t find anything about anyone else being due to speak to you. Can you describe them?”

“Sure! A guy, white all over, some kind of bird...” he trailed off as he recalled the doctor’s lack of feathers, “No, not a bird. A platypus, maybe.”

“A white platypus?” asked Tails, sounding oddly shaken, “Did he wear glasses? And have a dark streak in his hair?”

“Yeah, both of those. Did you see him on your way in?”

“Did he hurt you?” asked Sonic, gently but firmly, “You can tell us if he did, no matter what he said.”

Izuku suddenly realised he had seen that kind of questioning before. It had been in class, in a lesson on how to speak to witnesses; particularly witnesses who had been threatened into silence. People with loved ones being held hostage, or even children beaten by their parents. “Who was he?”, he asked, “Who was I just talking to?”

They replied only with concerned looks.

“I’m fine!” exclaimed Izuku, “All he did was take some samples. Don’t you think if he’d walked in and stabbed me, I’d be telling you about it? Now you obviously know him, so who is he? Did I just sit through a check-up with a mad scientist?”

Sonic sighed, “That’s a better guess than you might think. Yeah, he’s someone we’ve had dealings with before. Doctor Starline – uh, not the same kind of doctor.”

“Wait, if he didn’t do a real check-up does that mean we still don’t know if I have germs?”

The real doctor shook her head, “Sorry, kid. Now open wide and say ahh.”

The second battery of tests and samples passed as quickly as the first, although by the end Izuku was feeling really quite sick of it all. Luckily, the real doctor seemed to be able to do most of her tests from right there in the office.

He almost fell off his chair when she looked at one of her blinking monitors and told him, “Uh, kid, I hate to break it to you but you’re haunted.”

They can test for that? He wondered, “OK, when you say haunted…”

“Significantly haunted.”

“Mondo haunted”, elaborated Sonic, peering over the doctor’s shoulder. She frowned at him, but he didn’t seem to notice at all.

“Am I being followed by multiple spirits?”

“Yeah.”

“Are there eight of them?”

The doctor blinked, surprised and replied “Uh, yes, actually.”

Izuku sighed with relief and replied “No, that’s fine, they’re meant to be there.”

This did not seem to reassure his new friends as much as he had hoped it would. “You wanna elaborate on that?” asked Sonic while the others looked various shades of concerned.

Izuku took a deep breath and thought about how to explain One For All to a world without quirks, “My power isn’t my own. Or, at least, it wasn’t originally mine. It was given to me by my world’s greatest hero so that I could keep using it for a new generation. It’s been passed down for years, and every time it’s given to a new bearer, part of the old one goes with it. We’ve been calling them vestiges.”

“Are they a danger to anyone?” asked Sonic.

“No, they don’t really do anything in the real world. I’m not even sure how conscious they are. I’ve spoken to them in dreams a couple of times, but that’s mostly it.”

Sonic shrugged, “Alright, I suppose you know your own business.”

The casual air with which they accepted his explanation jumped out at him. “Do you, uh, often deal with ghosts around here?”

“Not often – not for a little while, now I think about it – but yeah, it’s happened.”

The doctor nodded and said “Not everyone’s seen a ghost, but I think everyone knows someone who knows someone who’s seen a ghost. In any case, I’m gonna take these results off for more thorough analysis, but I can say that at least you’re not carrying anything immediately dangerous.”

As they all left the office Izuku said to Silver, “So I’ve been meaning to ask, how exactly do I ruin the future?”

Silver nodded, still floating, and replied “Well, to be fair, less you and more your successor. All I know is you give a young girl some kind of power, and it proves to be too much for her to handle. She becomes a monster, so powerful that all she has to do is sneeze and she tears down entire buildings. And then everyone she meets starts manifesting these strange powers, and before long the entire world is in chaos.”

Izuku stared at him and asked “How the heck do I do the quirk singularity to a world that doesn’t have quirks to begin with?”

Before Silver could answer that, another hedgehog arrived on the scene. This one turned out to be bright pink, a girl, and a close friend of the three people he’d already met. Sonic and Tails once again seemed to be a popular pair; apparently everyone knew them. At least Amy Rose was willing to be introduced to him without throwing anything at him first, which made an improvement over Silver. She was interested enough in his strange story until they got to the part with Dr Starline, at which point she gasped and patted his arm gently saying, “I’m so sorry one of the people you met on your first day here was that creep. Say, you know what always helps me feel better after a tough time? Retail therapy!”

“You just want to get him in something other than that dumb t-shirt”, opined Tails.

“Also yes”, admitted Amy shamelessly.

“Is my shirt really that bad?” asked Izuku, “I mean, plenty of people aren’t even wearing anything, I’ve gotta be doing better than them.” And besides, he thought, this is only until I get home anyway.

She shook her head and replied, “That might be how it works back in your world, but here a shirt with no pants is so old-fashioned. I guess you could make it a retro throwback thing but you’d have to be deliberately doing that, and let’s be real, you’re not deliberately doing anything.”

“Hey! It’s not like I chose this look, this is what I wore to sleep last night!”

“So why are you still wearing it?”

“Because I’d feel weird going around naked!”

She grinned, “Exactly! You don’t wanna be dressed like that, so let me take you out and get you some actual clothes, and then you’ll be feeling a lot better.”

“I’m not getting out of this, am I?”

Sonic, Tails and Silver shook their heads.

“No time for that! We gotta get you a new look, pronto!”

“I’m not sure how I’m going to pay for this. Actually I don’t know what the local currency even is.”

“Don’t worry about that, I can cover you.”

They were already out the door by the time he realised, “When I came here, I shrank. I’ll grow again when I go home, so we’d better get pants with some stretch in them.”

“How much of a shrink are we talking here?”

“15-year-old human boy, a little on the short side if I’m honest but pretty good muscle mass.” It felt strange to talk about his own body in the third person like that, but he figured it was all the important information.

She nodded. “Sheila Flag has a whole range of stuff that should work OK for you. I just hope you like purple.”

He didn’t, but he liked it a lot better than public indecency so he decided to keep that to himself. He ended up with an outfit of purple bermuda shorts and crop jacket, with a white t-shirt underneath bearing a bright orange design of a stylised sunburst. He also picked up a pair of shoes to fit his new feet, naturally in bold red. True to her word, Amy paid for the lot. Izuku had no idea how she had enough to drop on an entirely new outfit for a stranger without even noticing, but from the way she was acting this sort of behaviour wasn’t out of the ordinary for her. He had to admit, she had been right – wearing a full outfit, he really did feel better. He was no closer to figuring out what the local currency was called, either, and he had no idea how the prices would convert to yen.

Once he was suited and booted, they stopped in at a café for a quick snack before heading back to the hospital. Amy made a remark about hospital food that gave him the impression that some things were truly universal, and in any case the place they visited seemed nice enough. It didn’t seem to be part of a chain, and in fact some of the furniture was mismatched or had obviously been repaired before, but the food was good and after some discreet questioning Amy confirmed that his rabbit form (and her hedgehog biology) meant a vegetarian diet was the order of the day. He wondered if that meant Tails had to eat meat, or if the fox could get by on other sources of protein. He was pretty sure he’d seen a chicken person in the crowd earlier and that opened the door to questions he really didn’t want to ask.

By the time they reached the hospital once more, yet another of Sonic’s friends had arrived to lend a hand. She was a pale lilac cat with a red gemstone embedded in her forehead, and Izuku was quite startled to hear her introduced as “Princess Blaze”.

“Should I bow?” he asked, suddenly feeling like he should probably know more about how to address foreign dignitaries.

“Please don’t, I get enough of that sort of thing when I’m representing the royal family. This is purely a personal matter - I have rather more experience with interdimensional travel than most people, so I thought perhaps I could help find you a way home.”

“How do you mean experience?”

“This isn’t my home universe, but I’m a fairly frequent visitor.”

Izuku pondered the implications of this for a moment. If she could travel between universes without much trouble, that had to mean that a reliable form of interdimensional travel existed. Even if it wouldn’t normally be used to go to his home dimension, that at least meant he had some kind of option. The important thing was to find out more about Blaze’s world, and how similar or different it was from this new world he’d found himself in.

Unfortunately, when he tried to speak that line of thought turned into him blurting out "Princess, are you aware you are a cat?"

Her eyes narrowed, and it may have been Izuku's imagination but he thought the room was starting to grow uncomfortably warm. "Quite aware, thank you" she replied sharply.

"Ah- sorry, that probably sounded like a strange question. What I meant is, if you're always a cat then your home dimension must be more like this one than mine is."

"You mean to say you're not usually a rabbit?"

"No, I'm a human."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah! And then I was taken here, by some kind of wormhole in space, and now I'm a rabbit person instead."

She considered him for a long moment before eventually answering, "That's quite the makeover."

He shrugged, “Well, Amy helped.”

Chapter Text

When Izuku had explained his situation more thoroughly, Blaze nodded and told him, "For someone who didn't know about other worlds until earlier today, you seem to be taking it all remarkably well."

He shrugged and replied, “Well, here I am. It’d be pointless trying to insist it was impossible, or just going wow, I don’t believe it every ten seconds. At a certain point you just gotta accept what’s happening and get on with it.” He paused for a second, “Man, have I really only been here a day? That’s wild.”

“You’ve only been here most of a day”, said Amy. “Actually, wait, where are you gonna sleep tonight?”

“Well I woke up in the woods, so probably anything would be an improvement. Any of you guys got a spare sleeping bag I could borrow?”

The others seemed like they wanted to object to this idea, but before anyone could respond a knock came at the door. An orderly poked his head in, and Izuku was a little surprised to see that he was another human. He had golden-bronze skin and dark, loosely curly hair, and with a tone of awkwardness he said “Ah, I hate to interrupt whatever conversation you’re all having but this is a hospital and we’d like the room free in case we need it.”

Izuku felt sheepish, and then wondered if the word sheepish was discriminatory in a world of animal-people. He probably wouldn’t like it if people said anyone clumsy was humanese, after all.

“I guess we’d better relocate”, agreed Sonic as the rest nodded their heads. The orderly smiled gratefully and left without another word. Izuku figured he probably had enough on his plate.

“My place is free”, said Tails cheerfully “let’s all head there!”

“Perfect!”

“Ah-” started Blaze, “If you’re having an impromptu sleepover, it may be best if Silver and I were to take our leave for the evening. We should really get caught up back at Restoration HQ, and I believe there’s an entrance somewhere near here.”

Amy nodded, “Yeah, if you head out of the hospital and head right until you get to the arcade, it’s around there.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to come over?” asked Tails.

“It’s not that we don’t want to”, replied Silver, “It’s more that if one of us doesn’t check in with Jewel soon, she’s gonna come looking.”

“We can meet up tomorrow, to see if we can find any more clues to getting our new friend here back home.”

The two waved their way out, followed shortly after by Izuku, Sonic, Amy and Tails. The hospital seemed little busier than it had been when he’d first arrived, but he certainly couldn’t fault the staff for wanting to make sure they had all available space in case of an emergency. As they headed for the exit, Tails pondered their next move “I’ll take a look for any anomalous energy readings, and that should lead us to some kind of arcane gemstone. Well, gemstone if we’re lucky, if we’re unlucky it’ll be a whole set.”

Izuku asked “Why are we assuming there’s some kind of gemstone involved?”

Sonic shrugged and replied “There usually is. It’s weirdly consistent, actually.”

Tails nodded, “My current theory is that there’s something about crystalline structures that allows them to contain energy. I don’t just mean like electricity, I mean the fundamental forces of the cosmos.”

Sonic quirked an eyebrow and asked “What, magic? Destiny?”

“Whatever we think is magic will eventually be explainable by science”, replied Tails, “I’m pretty sure an author said that once.”

“Well, what about fortune cards?” asked Amy, “It’s not like they’re always right, but they generally point me in the right direction, and sometimes I learn things from them I never could have gotten anywhere else.”

“Well we never know, it could be that you’re psychic.”

Amy fixed him with a flat stare and replied, “Psychic is just what nerds say when they don’t want to admit something is magic.”

“I interned for a guy who could see the future”, said Izuku.

“What was he like?”

Izuku considered the question for a moment before saying “I don’t think I’m allowed to talk about him.”

Sonic quirked an eyebrow and asked, “What, he made you sign an NDA for an internship?”

“No, because you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”

Nobody seemed to know how to reply to that until they hit the exit and found a familiar face.

“Ms Vanilla! Perfect timing!”

She looked unimpressed and said “You all need me to drive you someplace, huh?”

“You can pick the music!” offered Amy, sounding slightly desperate.

She folded her arms, “It’s my car, of course I can pick the music.”

“What I mean is, Sonic promises he won’t complain if you put on Complex Green”, she continued undeterred.

“Well, I suppose Tails’ place isn’t too far out of the way. We’ll have to leave now if I want to make it back in time for Cream, so everyone get a move on! Chop chop!”

Although he knew intellectually that it made sense to move everyone at once in an actual vehicle, it was difficult to get away from the fact that there was one adult giving a ride to a bunch of teenagers. This fact was driven even further home when they arrived at Tails’ bizarre home and she leaned out the window to wave them goodbye with a cheerful “You kids have a nice time!”

“Thanks, Ms Vanilla!”

Part of him wondered if this was what his life would have been like if it hadn’t taken until UA for him to make real friends. That part probably wanted examining later on, when he wasn’t stranded a world away from home, so he tried not to focus on it. He distracted himself by turning to Tails and asking the obvious question, “Why is your house shaped like your head?”

Sonic and Amy chuckled good-naturedly as Tails exclaimed “I thought it was cool when I designed it, OK? I was ten!”

That just raised further questions. “Why were you designing your own house when you were ten?”

“What estate agent is going to sell a house to a ten-year-old?”

Izuku supposed there was no arguing that.

They trooped inside and Tails herded them towards what seemed to be a combination living room and workshop. What Izuku would not discover until later that night was that most rooms in Tails’ house were a combination of something and a workshop. It was all comfortable enough, but it did have the slightly irritating side-effect that he kept finding screwdrivers and bundles of cable down the backs of couches and in other strange places. Neither Sonic nor Amy seemed very surprised by any of this.

Tails produced a remote with a flourish and the coffee table projected a hologram into the air, a larger and simpler version of the world map he had seen back in Miss Vanilla’s living room. Bright white spots seemed to mark major cities, or at least several of them were in locations he could remember cities being on the earlier map, and besides them there were a number of glowing shapes of various colours and sizes. Naturally, he asked about them.

Tails pointed at one of the larger ones and said, “They represent energy signatures, especially any anomalous ones or ones I’m keeping tabs on. This big red one here is Eggman.”

From their couch off to the side, Sonic and Amy let out a passionate “Booo!”

Tails continued undaunted, “It doesn’t look like he’s any busier than usual.”

“There’s another red one here, is that like an outpost or something?” It was pulsing much more quickly than the main one.

“That’s Sage. She is busy, which might be a bad sign or it might be nothing important. Sometimes she gets bored and goes exploring.”

“OK. Uh, the purple one?”

“Doctor Starline.”

“Booo!”

“He’s hard at work, probably up to no good with whatever samples he took from you.”

“Sorry”, said Izuku as he shuffled on the couch awkwardly.

“For what?”

“Well if I’d have known, I’d have at least played keepaway.”

Tails shook his head and turned back to the map, “The green one up here is the Master Emerald on Angel Island.”

Izuku braced himself for another boo, but instead Sonic and Amy cheered “Yaaaay!”

“Not doing anything, but no news is good news in this case.”

“And then there’s this blue one here.”

“That’s GUN headquarters.”

“BOOOO!” came the loudest response from Sonic and Amy yet, “Booo ACAB!”

“They’re busy, but they’re always busy.”

“Justice never sleeps, and neither do the cops” quipped Sonic.

He looked at them askance, and wondered if he had misread the situation when he thought of them as the equivalent of pro heroes. For all he knew, he’d stumbled into a gang of vigilantes “You guys know I’m in training to be law enforcement, right?”

“Sure”, agreed Amy, “In another world. You can’t arrest anyone here.”

“Huh, yeah. Guess all I can legally do here is disaster response and PR”

“Do your world’s superheroes do a lot of PR work?”

He shrugged and replied “Gotta keep the lights on somehow.”

“Don’t let Jewel hear you say that. She’ll have you doing recruitment ads for the Restoration before you can blink.”

“And Lanolin will be with her, and when Lanolin says to do something you just kinda end up doing it.”

Tails was taking a closer look at the hologram, and after a moment he said “Wait, I think I see something new.”

Izuku leaned over his shoulder, and sure enough there was a pink haze over one of the many small islands scattered across the map. It fluctuated between a dull pink spot and a larger, brighter glow, the tempo almost like the waves coming in and out on the seashore.

“Aha!” beamed Tails, “A weird energy reading, different from anything we’ve seen before! It looks like it’s been around for a day or two, so I’d bet cheese for chili dogs that’s something to do with how you wound up here!”

Sonic grinned, “Perfect! All we need to do now is find out what we’re looking for when we get there.”

“It’ll have to be something to do with teleportation or travel, right?” pondered Amy, “I mean, we’ve dealt with other worlds before but this isn’t a for-the-want-of-a-nail timeline thing, this is more about moving between worlds.”

“You got anything in mind?”

She stood up. “I might. I’m gonna head to the library, the big one at the university, and see if they have anything relevant.”

“Wouldn’t it be faster to look online?” asked Izuku.

She shook her head, “A lot of these things are in old and obscure books, and they haven’t all been put online. It’s actually better if we have one person looking in an actual library, and someone else trying from another angle.”

The others waved her off, and she headed out the door and into the evening. As she left, she started skipping and half-humming-half-singing a cheerful tune.

Tails and Sonic waved her off and then headed back inside. Tails immediately hopped on an impressive-looking desktop computer and set about researching whatever the mysterious energy signal he’d found might have been. Sonic surprised Izuku by letting himself into the kitchen and setting about making dinner. For want of anything else useful to do Izuku decided to help, and soon they were preparing a hearty vegetable stew. He was relieved to find that everything in Tails’ kitchen seemed to work more-or-less the same as the appliances and cookware he recognised from back home. He resolved to thank Tenya for insisting on setting up a chore rota for the dorms; without the experience he’d recently had cooking for his classmates he was sure he’d be totally lost.

They set some aside for Amy, and had plenty left over even after that. Sonic carried out an extra bowl for Tails, and as Izuku sat down to eat he could hear Sonic prodding the fox to have his dinner. He had to wonder if the two of them were friends, or if they were adopted brothers. He had no idea where either of their parents were, once he thought of it, but neither seemed to be worried about it. Just as they were finishing up, Amy Rose came bursting back in through the door holding up a truly ancient-looking book. She wolfed down her share of the stew and then explained what she’d found.

“I’ve got something, and I think it might be just what we need. According to this, the Wayward Waystone is a pink gemstone that has a habit of showing up in strange places, almost as if it just appeared out of thin air. On top of that, it also tends to disappear for long stretches of time before showing back up again. Until now, most people assumed that whenever it disappeared it had moved itself to somewhere that didn’t have many people around, but knowing what we do now about parallel universes…”

“It might have been in entirely different worlds!” exclaimed Izuku.

“Exactly! Now, with what you said about everyone in your world having strange powers, it’s possible that the Waystone showed up near you, reacted with your power somehow, and then when it teleported back here it dragged you along for the ride.”

“Amy, that’s brilliant!”

She held up the book with a cheesy grin and declared “And it’s all thanks to the books at my local library!”

Sonic rolled his eyes and said, “No it isn’t, you live in Station Square.”

“Well, yeah, but those adverts never say it’s all thanks to the books at my friend’s local library now do they?”

“Whatever the case”, said Tails as he rapidly read through the book Amy had brought with her, “We must find the Wayward Waystone, at the latest by the great alignment.”

“Is that like an eclipse?” asked Izuku, hoping it wasn’t some local religious custom that he was inadvertently blaspheming.

“Yes, but with more moving parts. The Earth, the Moon, Little Planet and Planet Wisp will all be in alignment with the Sun, with the Earth at the far end like a cueball on a cosmic pool table.”

“How about Lost Hex?”

“No, actually, they’re not involved in this one.”

“That’s a relief!” said Sonic as he wiped his forehead, “That sort of headache is the last thing we need.”

“Once we find the Wayward Waystone, we should be able to combine its power with some of our own to find the right coordinates to send you home.”

"The right coordinates?” asked Izuku, “How does that work?"

Tails' eyes lit up, "Well basically, in a multiversal environment there are no absolute points of reference. It's a little like outer space that way, and the universes themselves are like stars."

Izuku gasped, "So the measurements are relative to your point of origin! You have to count what's one, I guess, multiversal unit away from your home universe and work out a framework from there!"

"Exactly! And the links between certain universes are more stable than others, so using our home and Blaze's, we can triangulate other points relative to those two universes!"

"And you could use known universes for reference points even if they're unsuitable for human life!" Izuku blinked, "Uh, mammal life, sorry. Still getting used to that."

Sonic shook his head, "Not just mammals, either. I should take you to meet the Chaotix some time, they're a lot of fun."

"Sapient life?"

"I've seen the word sophonts in some older theoretical material, I kinda like it”, volunteered Tails.

“Grammar later, bed now” declared Amy, pointing at a clock with an expression on her face that brooked no argument. Izuku belatedly realised that it was fully dark outside.

Sonic leaned over to Izuku and said, quietly, “Sorry for sending you to bed like a kid, but if we’re not firm with Tails he’ll be up all night tinkering and researching.”

Izuku shrugged, “I get it. Everyone’s got one thing they stay up too late for, right?” He paused for a second and realised he was starting to get pretty worn out himself, “I guess it couldn’t hurt for us to all turn in for the night.”

“Great. Now, it might not have all the comforts and amenities of the woods but would you settle for the spare bed?”

“It’s either that or the couch, and I’ll fight you for the couch” said Amy cheerfully.

“Wh-shouldn’t you fight me for the actual bed?”

“No, I’ve known too many of Sonic’s friends. If I didn’t insist on the couch you’d try and guilt me into letting you sleep on it so I could have an actual bed. You’re gonna get the bed, and you’re gonna put up and shut up because I’m fine on the couch. OK?”

Izuku wasn’t sure what was happening, but he decided this was probably another case where it was wisest not to argue with Amy Rose. “Wait, if I’m taking the spare bed where will Sonic sleep?”

“In my bed”, replied Sonic.

“He’s here often enough that I have a spare bed for Sonic, and a spare bed for whoever else”, explained Tails, “We gotta look out for each other, ya know?”

Izuku briefly thought that Tails and Sonic seemed to have the kind of bond that he and Kacchan could have had if not for Kacchan being the way he’d been as a kid, but once again he put that to one side because it was a little too sore to think about on such a lovely night. The spare room (or spare spare room) was simply furnished, but the bed was enough for a good night’s sleep and Izuku couldn’t find it in him to care very much about anything beyond that.

Breakfast the next morning was reheated leftover stew, and it turned out to be just as good the second time. When they were ready for the day Tails lead them to his garage, which turned out to double as a hangar. Behind a tiny yellow car that looked like an old-style Formula One racer, there was a much larger shape covered in a tarp. Tails flew up and whipped off the tarp to reveal a bright red biplane, every component gleaming in the hangar lights. Izuku privately didn’t know the first thing about aircraft, but it at least looked good.

“I present: The Tornado! Mark, uh, I’m not sure any more. We kinda go through ‘em. Anyway, this will be our ride to the island.”

“It only has one passenger seat”, noticed Izuku.

Sonic replied “You can have it, we’ll be fine on the wings.”

“The wings?”

“Ain’t the first time, ain’t gonna be the last”

“Is this like that sci-fi thing where people have magnets in their shoes, or do you just have no regard for your own safety?”

Tails slapped his own forehead “Magnet shoes! Aw man, I should’ve thought of that years ago!”

“So, uh, what were you doing for safety when you were on the wings?” asked Izuku, already dreading the answer.

Amy shrugged, “We mostly just hold on real tight.”

Sometimes Izuku hated being right.

Sonic beamed and gave him a thumbs-up as he and Amy clambered up onto the lower pair of wings and, indeed, gripped the struts between the two wing sets, “Let’s go and see what that power of yours can do!” At least the two of them were wearing goggles, Izuku supposed.

Before Tails could start the engine he took the opportunity to ask one last question “So I’ve been wondering, what happens if we don’t find the stone before the great alignment?”

“Then it’ll have to wait for the next great alignment”, replied Amy from the wing. Izuku couldn’t get over that part.

“And how long will that take?”

“Oh, about 120 years.”

“I can’t be here for 120 years!” he replied, shocked, “I have homework due!”

Any reply she might have made was snatched away by the engine starting. The hangar door rolled open and they took off into the rising sun.

Chapter Text

Once they had been flying for about 20 minutes, Tails looked over the side of the plane and then back up at Sonic and Amy. “Figure we’re far enough out from town yet?” he asked.

Amy considered for a moment before nodding. “Go for it!” she yelled over the wind.

With a theatrical flourish, Tails pressed a button on the control panel in front of him. A series of unnerving mechanical noises came from within the plane, and Izuku saw the wings rearrange themselves to a more streamlined shape. When he glanced down at the body of the plane, he saw what looked like rocket engines emerging from the sides. Even the tail had made itself more angular.

Tails glanced back at him, “A regular prop plane would take too long to reach the island – but this’ll get us there in a snap!”

He hit another button, and this one was bright red. Years of media had taught Izuku what to expect when someone hit a big red button, and he wasn’t disappointed as the rocket boosters fired into life and the plane leapt forward as if shot from a cannon. He was pressed back into his seat like he was being dragged backwards by Magne’s quirk, and when he could force his eyes open he was amazed by how casually Sonic and Amy were holding on to the wing struts. He was reminded of when he’d first met All Might, and had clung onto the number one hero’s leg as he’d leapt through the air, but this was a far more sustained force.

Beneath them, the landscape went zooming past too fast to see until suddenly they were out over the open ocean. In the early morning sunlight it was a beautiful bold blue, like the loveliest parts of the Pacific far from any touch of human industry, and it made Izuku feel like the world was one of endless possibilities. With a whole world before him, it seemed a shame that they had to search for his ticket home so soon.

Around midday they took a break for lunch, landing on a small (though inhabited) island. It was nothing like the city he’d spent much of the previous day in, and in fact felt a little more like the village he’d first met Vanilla in, albeit with a more tropical look. In fact, it turned out the island was a popular vacation spot, so it was easy for them to find a café and grab a bite to eat.

After they’d eaten, Tails detached some of the rocket boosters from the plane and went looking for somewhere to store them. “The rocket equation is a harsh mistress”, he explained, “And now that we’re done with them they’d just be useless weight. I’ll come back for them later, I do this all the time on longer trips.” In the end, they found a rental storage company near the island’s main port and so the rockets were stashed in a garage. It seemed a very mundane sort of place to put a rocket, but Izuku supposed he wasn’t an expert in that sort of thing.

“There’s islands like this one, or the one we came from this morning”, explained Sonic as Tails fussed over the plane, “And then there’s islands like the one we’re heading to, which I’m not sure even has a name. If there’s anything you need from the civilised world now’s your chance to get it, because from here on out we’re gonna be roughing it.”

“Well, I’m a rabbit now…” pondered Izuku, “So I can just kinda eat leaves and stuff, right?” He wished he’d asked Koda for more information on rabbits when he’d had the chance. Who knew when something was going to come in handy?

Amy sighed a long-suffering sigh, “We have food! We have trail rations and stuff! Stop trying to go feral!” She pouted and said under her breath, “I swear, he’s worse than Knuckles.” Izuku wasn’t sure he had been meant to hear that.

“Yeah”, said Sonic, “I really more meant if you wanted to pick up a book to pass the time?”

Izuku was struck by a sudden, awful realisation. “I’m being racist about animal people, aren’t I?” After all, he thought, How would Tsu like it if I told her she could skip lunch and go eat some flies?

“What’s racist?”

“Uh, prejudiced?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Sonic, “Yeah, kinda.” Next to him Amy nodded, a stern expression on her face that said she thought it was a little more serious than kinda.

He slumped, “I’m really sorry, guys. I just, you know, two days ago I was a human. It’s a lot to get used to.” He flopped one of his bunny ears for emphasis.

Amy patted his shoulder and said “I’ll forgive you, but maybe cool it with the human-supremacist remarks when Tails is around?”

“Have I said anything to him that was…?” If he’d been racist to a kid, he’d probably have to hide in a hole in the ground out of shame and never come out.

Sonic shook his head “No, if you had we would’ve had this conversation a lot sooner.” His tone left no question about how that conversation would have gone.

“OK, great.” An awkward silence settled over the trio, and it didn’t seem to want to leave.

Eventually Sonic was the one brave enough to try to spark up the conversation again. “So, uh, how ‘bout that Wayward Waystone, huh?”

Amy gamely attempted a smile and said “I’m glad it’s pink, you know? More things in the world should be pink.”

“You’re not biased at all, of course.”

After a while he did end up buying a book from a stationers’ in town with some money borrowed from Sonic, but the second leg of the flight was too windy to read anyway so it would have to wait. At least he had something to look forward to.

His first sight of their destination was as breath-taking as the open ocean had been, but in a strikingly different way. At the centre of the island was a cluster of mountains, visible long before the rest of the land mass around them and wreathed in moody-looking dark clouds. They were too far out for him to see if it was raining yet, but he was already starting to regret not having thought to get a coat at the little town they’d stopped off at. The rest of the island surrounding the mountains was mostly covered in thick forest, too dense for him to see anything beneath the canopy from the air. Tails brought them around the mountains in a loop, and below them Izuku traced the course of a bright white river, racing through rocks and turns until it ended in a waterfall, sparkling in the sun.

After they had circled the mountains, Tails peered at a computer screen and eventually nodded his head. “The Wayward Waystone is definitely in that central mountain range!” he called out, loud enough to be heard over the wind and the engine, “But I don’t like the look of those clouds! I’ll land further out, and we can make the rest of the way on foot!”

He suited action to the word and brought the plane down on a beach. The thick forest started almost as soon as the sand ended, leaving no other safe landing place. As soon as they started their journey on foot, they realised the island was either inhabited, or it had been at some point. The remains of a long-overgrown road were occasionally visible, rectangular stones too regular and too close together to be natural. When the mountains were visible through the trees, Izuku peered up at them to see if there was any further sign of the locals. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he saw an opening in one mountain that was just a little too neat to be a real cave.

The ground started to slope upwards as they approached the mountains, and the signs of civilisation grew more visible as the ground became rockier and the trees thinned out. The road was present in more and larger patches, until eventually they were simply following along it as others must have done hundreds of years ago or even longer. As the ground continued to rise and the mountains loomed larger before them, they came across a fissure in the rocky earth, crossed by a bridge of similar stone blocks to the ones making the road.

“Oh hey!” said Sonic cheerfully, “Lucky this is still here.”

“Who do you suppose built all this stuff?” asked Amy, “It doesn’t look Echidna, or capital-A Ancient.”

“Difficult to say”, said Tails as the group started to cross the bridge, “But it doesn’t look like whoever built it all is still here to say hello. Hopefully they just packed up and left for normal reasons, not there’s-a-monster-under-the-island reasons or anything like that.”

Izuku heard the sound coming from the bridge before any of the others, no doubt owing to his new rabbit ears. A deep and ugly scraping noise, followed by a tiny skit noise like someone kicking a pebble, which he realised with an almost physical sense of dread must be some of the ancient stone blocks starting to crack and come loose – the bridge, which had endured wear and weather for centuries, could no longer bear the weight of anyone walking over it. Tails was already on the far side, but he and Sonic were still dead centre of the stone structure and Amy was only a pace ahead of them. Just as the others were twitching their ears, perhaps trying to decide if they really had heard something, he gave Amy a good hard shove in the back and grabbed Sonic with Black Whip. The tentacles surged from his hand, so often difficult to control but with a life on the line they were blessedly doing just what he wanted. With Sonic safe he hopped onto the far side of the ravine and landed next to Amy, who was rubbing the small of her back and frowning. He gave her an apologetic smile just as the bridge collapsed into rubble and fell into the dark below.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the save”, said Sonic, voice muffled from within his impromptu cocoon of tentacles, “But do you think I could get back on solid ground now?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry.” He set his passenger down as gently as he could manage and withdrew the tentacles as Sonic gave himself a once-over.

“What the heck was that?” asked Tails.

He chuckled wryly and asked, “Did I not mention I could do that?”

Sonic shook his head, “No, Shadow the Bunny, you didn’t. Got anything else up those sleeves?”

Izuku smiled ruefully, “That’s a much more complicated question than you might think. Eight ghosts, remember?”

“Eight powers for eight ghosts?” asked Amy.

“...kinda?” Izuku prevaricated, “I’m not 100% sure how all of them work yet. Also All Might didn’t actually add anything new to the list, he just massively increased the physical enhancement aspect.”

Sonic nodded, “Like when you kicked through that robot.”

“Would you believe that was me operating at about 20%? I’m very careful about maintaining control over it, because I have to be.”

“Huh. Have you ever looked into inhibitors?” Amy fiddled with one of her bracelets idly and asked, “Wait, do they have those in your world?”

He briefly thought of the weighted bracelets the teachers had worn for their end-of-term practical exams. “I’m not sure it’d help, but I’ve got a system that works OK for me. Actually, I’ve got classmates whose quirks are way more volatile, but they’re less directly physical so it’d probably be harder to come up with a good control mechanism anyway.”

Tails’ eyes lit up, and some part of Izuku recognised that this must be how he looked whenever he wanted to geek out about quirks. “Who?” he asked eagerly.

“Well the first one that comes to mind is my friend Tokoyami. He’s – well, I guess it’d be pretty normal here, but he’s got a bird head. But then, the rest of his body is baseline human so I guess he’d still look a little unusual. Anyway his quirk, Dark Shadow, is kind of alive. It’s like he’s got a spirit connected to him at all times, though it doesn’t like coming out in bright light. The opposite is also true – if it’s too dark, it can be difficult to keep under control.”

“A bird head on a human body?” mused Sonic, “Sounds almost like an ancient Egyptian god, didn’t one of them have a bird head?”

“I think he was an Ibis”, said Amy, “He was the god of writing, among other things.”

Izuku started. “Ancient – OK no, quirk discussion is over. What do you mean ancient Egypt?”

“Ancient Egypt!” said Sonic, cheerfully, “You know, pyramids, the sphinx, guys doing this?” He struck the stereotypical ancient Egyptian Z-Pose and proceeded to ‘walk like an Egyptian’ while Tails and Amy giggled.

“Yeah, we have that too!” exclaimed Izuku.

“Your world also had Egypt?”

“It still does! I mean, they’re a normal country now, they don’t still write in hieroglyphs or anything, but yeah! They have like the biggest museum in the world, it’s full of stuff like mummies and golden scarabs and obelisks.”

“W-were the ancient aliens dorks right all along?” asked Tails with a look of slowly dawning horror.

“I don’t want that” admitted Izuku, “I really, really don’t want that to be true.”

Amy looked at them with a worried expression and asked “Wait, what does it mean that both our worlds also have ancient aliens guys as well?”

Izuku felt like his brain had short-circuited. With a vehement shake of his head he replied, “Nope. Not touching that.”

“One existential crisis is enough for now, thanks”, agreed Tails, who looked similarly shaken.

“Well you boys better figure out your philosophy quick”, said Amy, “Because next up, we’ve got some mountains to climb.”

Chapter Text

Despite the heavy cloud cover surrounding the mountain peaks, there was no rain as they began their climb. Izuku, who had never been mountain-climbing and who in any case didn’t spend as much time as he would have liked out in the natural world, was deeply grateful. He didn’t know how hard it would be to climb a mountain in the rain, but he assumed very.

People often spoke about grey like it was an ugly colour, or even like it was somehow unnatural; the ways they spoke about brown weren’t much nicer. And yet, as the green of the island gave way to bare rock in grey and brown, Izuku couldn’t help but see how beautiful the mountains were in their own way. He’d seen pictures of mountains from a distance, of course – any Japanese schoolkid with working eyes had. But just like the forest he’d woken up in at the start of his strange adventure, he found that actually walking through a mountain range, following rocky paths and skirting the edges of ravines that seemed to plunge into the depths of the earth was very different from photos or videos.

The wind was the main thing, he decided. Even through his new fur it was bitingly cold. That only got more true as the day progressed and the sun started to drop towards the horizon. They stopped to set up their campsite while it was still evening rather than night, the better to have light to work with while they worked. Izuku wasn’t much help with the tents, but he did manage to scrounge up some near-petrified wood from the remains of particularly adventurous trees that they used to get a campfire going. Dinner was a simple affair, and he at last had time to get started on the book he’d bought back at the last town. He was pretty sure he’d guessed who the murderer was by the end of the second chapter, but he supposed he could be wrong.

That night, he dreamed of going back to UA and seeing all his friends again. Uraraka was overjoyed, of course, as were Todoroki and Iida in their own ways. Tsu ribbited happily, and even Kacchan seemed pleased to have him back, though he buried it beneath snapping and snarling. The happy scene came to an abrupt end when Mina asked him why he was shorter than usual. He looked down at himself to see not a human boy, but a green-furred rabbit. He looked back up at the assembled class as they gathered round him, and in the press they started to turn into animals themselves. Mina became a cat and launched herself up to perch on the ceiling, and Yaoyorozu became an elephant of all things, with glowing gemstones falling out of her body and scattering around the room. It was only as an Aizawa-shaped sloth grumbled at them all to quiet down that Izuku woke up. He crawled out of his tent to get some air, and found that he had come out in time to watch the dawn.

The sunrise painted the underside of the persistent cloud cover in a range of pinks and oranges. It seemed to have rained overnight, as the world being revealed by the slowly rising sun glistened where it caught the light, but either it had been gentle or Izuku had slept deeply. Mist had come in from the ocean and spread over the jungle they had trekked through the day before; it was difficult to see the coastline even from their high vantage point. Izuku, who had never before had reason to think about such things, suddenly understood why lighthouses were so important.

As they continued up the mountain, they heard the sound of heavy machinery before they saw anything amiss. At first Izuku was heartened by the noise, thinking that if there was some kind of factory on this island then that must mean people – people they could ask for help in locating the Wayward Waystone. He guessed the best-case scenario would be that they already knew where it was, and that they would be happy for it to be taken off their hands. He wondered what the employees would look like; at the airfield back on the previous island he’d seen some wearing high vis vests and yellow hard hats so apparently some things never changed. The others seemed less optimistic, for reasons that became clear after they rounded a last corner and saw the source of the strange sounds.

A great pit had been opened in the earth, so large that at first Izuku thought it must be a valley or some kind of natural depression. Only after looking more carefully did he realise it was an open-cast mine, with a path spiralling down around the edges of the pit towards the bottom like the imprint of some gigantic drill. Machines had been erected around the mine, some in the open air and some under roofs or in open metal sheds; all were grumbling and grinding and belching smoke. Izuku guessed they were probably in various stages of sifting through the dirt and rock to find whatever the mine was actually looking for. The mine seemed to be staffed entirely by humanoid robots, and with their round builds and grinning blank faces they bore a striking resemblance to the one Izuku had fought when he’d first arrived in this world. There were easily dozens of them, and he had no way of knowing how many more there were that were not visible from his vantage point.

“Of all the rotten luck – a mining operation!” huffed Tails. He looked like he felt the sight before them was an insult to him personally.

“You know”, opined Amy, “just once I’d like to go to a beautiful tropical getaway that wasn’t being torn apart by tyranny and greed.”

“Well, Starfall” offered Sonic. As they all spoke, the robots continued to work at the same rapid pace.

Amy sighed, seemingly reluctant to concede a point and said “OK, I’d like for that to happen and for me to be in a position to enjoy it.”

“What happened in Starfall?” Izuku asked, wondering if there was some common local hazard he would need to avoid.

“Well the scenery was lovely,” allowed Amy, “And the locals were nice once you got to know them, but the accomodations left a lot to be desired.”

“The local fauna was cool, though” mused Sonic, “Wait, fauna is animals, isn’t it? Or is it plants?”

“Don’t use a fancy word to show off if you don’t actually know what it means”, grumbled Tails.

Sonic shrugged it off, “All I know is, that squid was fun. Better than all those orcas, at least, those guys are always just plain unpleasant.”

“Do you have some kind of vendetta with sea life?” asked Izuku.

“It’s strictly one-sided, I assure you.”

They approached the mine, and as the rest of them were acting like it was necessary to sneak Izuku followed their lead. There didn’t seem to be anything he could recognise as security, as it seemed whoever was in charge was trusting in the remote location of the mine to keep anyone else away. As they crept closer, Izuku couldn’t help but notice an unpleasant scent hanging in the air. Eventually, he could no longer keep his displeasure to himself. “Ugh! What’s that smell?”

“That, Izuku, is the delicate bouquet of a diesel engine”, explained Sonic.

“It’s foul! I can’t believe people used to think it was normal for cars and buses to run on that muck.”

“To be fair, I use oil-based fuel for the Tornado’s booster rockets” said Tails, “But I mean, they’re rockets. The only choices for rocket fuel are bad, or worse. Eggman has no need to use oil for half of the stuff he does, I swear he’d put an internal combustion engine in a jack-in-the-box if he could make it fit.”

“What about the plane itself?” asked Izuku. He was pretty sure he’d read once that early planes had used toxic fuel, and he had no idea if the Tornado was actually the kind of thing they’d been flying back in the 20^th Century or if it only looked that way. Then again, historical records from the years immediately prior to the dawn of quirks could be a little fragmented and confusing at the best of times.

“Oh, that’s green hydrogen fuel” said Tails cheerfully.

“Huh, I didn’t even know hydrogen came in different colours.”

“Yeah, it’s the grey fuel you wanna watch out for. Like half the companies that sell it turn out to be front businesses for Eggman, so that’s something you need to be careful about.”

The robots all stilled, at the same moment. They stood in perfect silence for a long moment before turning in unison to look in the same direction, gazing up at the sky. He heard the others grumble under their breath as he followed the robots’ line of sight and saw an enormous red vessel soaring over the horizon until it filled the sky. The noise of it was incredible, and if any of his new friends were to say anything he was sure he wouldn’t hear it. The ship hung above them in the air, and blinking lights ran up and down it seemingly at random. It was long and pointed, but this seemed to be more for the intimidation factor than for any notion of aerodynamics.

As it came to a halt, the astounding noise of it died down to a low background rumble. Something detached itself from the larger ship and flew towards them in a smooth arc. At first he thought it might be a missile, but the others were clearly aware of it and they weren’t acting as if it were dangerous. As the object got closer, Izuku realised it was some kind of flying vehicle, with a human man visible piloting it. His mustache was truly impressive, Izuku had to admit.

As it got closer, he could hear the pilot start to harangue them “Ah, I’d wondered what those strange energy readings were! I might have expected to find you little pests already here.”

Izuku started as he noticed a pink light emanating from one side of the flying pod. A mechanical arm extended itself, and sure enough a glowing pink gemstone was clutched in its metal claws. The arm waved lazily in the air, seemingly just to taunt them. The vehicle itself was definitely the sort of thing a support department student would dream up; that unique marriage of stylised aesthetics and raw functionality was hard to find anywhere else.

The strange man seemed to notice his presence for the first time, asking “Oh, and who’s this? Another tagalong?” Izuku couldn’t see his eyes behind dark goggles, but he was certain the man was rolling them.

Sonic stepped forward to reply “He’s a guest, doc. Just give us the Wayward Waystone and we’ll send him on home, you’ll never see him again.”

“Hmm… tempting, but I have a better idea. How about instead of that I blow you all to atoms and keep the stone anyway?”

“You don’t even know what it does!” objected Amy.

“Eh, I’m sure I’ll find some use for it. But in the meantime, the satisfaction of knowing that you want it and I have it will suffice.” He zoomed back off into the sky in his bizarre flying pod, and as he went up over a dozen more small black shapes came crashing down from the waiting ship. They soon turned out to be robots, of a kind broadly similar to the ones working the mine. Those bots had themselves turned to face the small group of intruders, and were moving towards them in an eerie unison.

Tails sighed, and said “You know, I really don’t know why we still try to reason with him.”

“At this point it’s less for his benefit and more so I can know I at least tried to settle things peacefully before smashing everything in sight.”

Izuku would have replied, but at that moment the robots attacked. Where the mining robots carried drills and jackhammers, the new ones brandished rifles – and, Izuku had to correct himself, also jackhammers, though they were carrying them like rifles. His eyes flicked between the approaching robots, trying to decide which one to take on first when a blue shape sped by him and blasted into one of the ones with guns. Not wanting to be left behind, Izuku fired up One For All and leapt into the air before coming crashing down on another robot. It crumpled under his impact, clearly not designed to withstand the kind of force he could inflict.

He picked up a shard of chassis and hurled it at another robot, gratified to see his projectile smash the gun from its hands. As the robot reached to retrieve it, Amy crushed its head into its body with a worryingly large hammer; Izuku had no idea where she’d been keeping it. She followed up with a baseball swing, and the robot went soaring across the horizon. He heard something moving behind him and to the right, and he lunged to the side in time to avoid another robot trying to cave in his skull with a mining drill. It was distracted for a brief moment by Tails chucking a wrench at it, and while it was turning to assess the new threat Izuku darted forwards and punched directly into its chest. The robot staggered backwards for a few faltering steps before exploding.

He waved his thanks to Tails before darting off to tackle yet another robot. He quickly tore through a few of the mining bots, before coming face-to-face with something larger and more fearsome. Judging from its bulky armour it seemed to be a dedicated combat unit, and it was holding a frankly enormous hammer. He could hear the sounds of the ongoing fight moving away from him, and part of him started to wish he hadn’t gone off on his own when he had no idea what these bots were capable of – there had been no Present Mic to give an explanation of the different kinds this time.

The larger bot swung its hammer, and as Izuku dodged he latched onto it with Black Whip. He heaved the hammer from the robot’s grasp, and flung it at a trio of gun-toting robots approaching from its other side. With a terrific crunch, the flying hammer reduced them to so much scrap metal. The one in front of him, bereft of its weapon, did not seem amused. It joined its hands together to form a club, and prepared to smash him where he stood.

“Hey kid! Duck!”

The moment he did, the combat robot’s head exploded in a shower of sparks and metal. He turned to face the direction the voice had come from and saw a sheep woman in practical, rugged clothing jogging up to him. She rang a golden bell, and his eyes widened as a blue shockwave raced past him with a pleasant tinkling noise until it collided with another robot in a sonorous explosion. Behind her, he could see a flying grey shape bouncing around almost at random, colliding with robots left and right.

The sheep reached him and nodded a greeting, “Name’s Lanolin. The one bouncing around like a heat-seeking pinball is Tangle, and Whisper’s in back.” A robot slumped to the ground without its head and the sheep said “Thanks, Whisper.”

“Whisper’s a really cool codename, I’m gonna suggest it to a friend of mine when I get home.”

“Oh yeah!” exclaimed Tangle, who was briefly near them, “You’re the alien kid Silver and Blaze mentioned! They say hi, by the way.”

Lanolin put a finger to her ear in the apparently universal habit of people wearing an earpiece and said “Whisper says it’s OK if your friend copies her name, but only if they’re not also doing a lone wolf gimmick.”

“That’s no problem, I think he’s more of a cat person anyway.”

“You think he’s a cat?” asked Tangle, “What, are you penpals?” Before he had a chance to answer, she had already zoomed away to finish off the last remaining robot. At the same moment she hit it, so did a shot from the unseen Whisper; it was impossible for Izuku to tell who struck the final blow. Izuku turned to look the way he had come, and he saw Sonic, Amy and Tails heading over, a trail of destroyed bots behind them.

Tangle zipped back with equal energy as the smashed robots sparked and twitched, and he explained to their open disbelief that everyone in his world was a human. He wondered if Sonic and his friends had merely been hiding their scepticism, or if they were more cosmopolitan than this group.

“What are you three all doing here, by the way?” asked Amy as their group reached the newcomers, “Not that we don’t appreciate the help, it’s just surprising is all.”

Lanolin stood up straighter, and replied “Jewel got your message about looking for the stone to get our green guest here back to his home dimension. She figured these things never go as smoothly as Plan A, so she sent us out to lend a hand. Belle was able to track a weird energy signature somewhere around here, so we figured it was as good a place to start as any.”

“Well!” exclaimed Sonic, “As long as you’re not here to arrest anyone, I guess it’s nice to have you along for the ride!”

“Arrest?” muttered Izuku, unheard by the gathering crowd.

The sheep’s face twitched for a moment; she seemed to be trying to contain a frown and only mostly succeeding. “So far I haven’t seen you do anything to warrant it – this time”, she said in a tone of deep frustration.

“I knew it”, groaned Izuku, “You guys are vigilantes, aren’t you?”

“Hey, I’m with the Restoration!” objected Amy, “It’s just that Sonic and Tails are more what you might call… freelancers.”

“The Restoration gets the first look at anything I invent”, said the fox, “Or at least, anything that isn’t for one person specifically. Even then, a lot of that stuff is for Restoration members anyway.”

“Thanks again for the new gloves!” Tangle flexed her fingers and grinned, “They really help a lot. Oh! New guy! We can all show you our IDs, that’ll prove we’re legit.”

As a proud (provisional) licence-carrying pro hero, Izuku considered that a convincing argument. He looked over the ID cards produced by Tangle, Lanolin and Whisper in that order. Of course, he had no idea what a Restoration ID was supposed to look like, but an ID card only had one job so whoever made them they tended to look more or less the same. The ones the trio showed him seemed normal enough to him, so he nodded and thanked them.

“With that handled, what’s the situation?” asked Lanolin. She seemed to be directing the question at Amy, apparently doing her best to pretend Sonic just wasn’t there. Whisper was once again standing back and observing the gathering, and Tangle and Tails were playing some kind of tail-based rock-paper-scissors. Tails was mostly winning.

Amy gave Lanolin and Whisper a brief rundown of all that had happened in the past couple of days.

After a moment Lanolin asked “So, what’s the plan?”

Tails looked up from his game, “If he left the same way he came in, which he likely would because it’s the quickest route back home, that means he probably didn’t see our Tornado parked on the other side of the island.”

“Well, he’s not going to think we swam here”, objected Izuku.

“No”, allowed Tails, “if he thought about it he’d reason that we must have got here somehow and that it was probably by plane. But he hasn’t seen it, and if we’re lucky the satisfaction of having got one over on us will mean he won’t think about it until we’ve already had a chance to catch up.”

“Is that really likely?” asked Izuku.

“If Eggman has one weakness, it’s his arrogance”, nodded Tails.

“If he has two, the second one is his megalomania” agreed Lanolin.

“If he has a third, it’s his table manners”, mused Sonic, “But I guess that’s not really relevant in this situation.”

Amy punched into the palm of her hand, “In any case, if the Diamond Cutters make a brief attack on his ship, that’ll hopefully draw his attention enough for us in the Tornado to come up behind him and sneak aboard.”

“How will the Tornado get home?”

“I’ll set it to autopilot”, said Tails cheerfully, “Once the Diamond Cutters have disengaged, they can link up with it and set it to follow their own plane. It’s something Belle and I have been working on.”

“Oh, they have something like that where I’m from!” said Izuku, “I think it’s called Loyal Wingman.”

“Well that’s unnecessarily specific” said Amy, and Izuku had an uncomfortable flashback to the conversation he’d had with her and Sonic the previous day.

“Uh, man in the sense of mankind – you know what, forget it, I’m sure you can think of a better name anyway.”

Chapter Text

The Diamond Cutters’ plane could scarcely have looked more different from Tails’ Tornado. Where his was charmingly old-fashioned (not counting the rocket boosters, which in any case it didn’t have at that moment) theirs was sleek and futuristic, all sharp angles and matte black edged with silver. A catchy design of two five-pointed stars was painted in red on each wing, and on the hull just behind the cockpit. It looked outright military, in a way that seemed strange when he remembered it was crewed by three animal people, none of them much over four feet in height.

“You like it?” asked Lanolin, “We call it Bluebird.”

Izuku nodded, before he noticed the others were quickly getting ready to take off. He hopped up into the passenger seat, buzzing with anticipation to catch up with the bizarre flying ship. The Tornado raced down the beach and then leapt up into the sky in seemingly no time at all as Izuku peered out the side at the waiting Bluebird. One the horizon he could see a small moon hanging in the sky; but not the one that had shone the previous night. He was surprised, until he remembered that this planet had more than one, and not only that but they were apparently soon to come into alignment. Once again, Amy and Sonic seemed happy enough on the wings.

He was quickly distracted from his thoughts of celestial bodies. The air behind Bluebird shimmered with heat haze as it started to roll down the beach, slowly picking up speed until its wheels were skipping at the rising tide. It picked itself up as it raised speed, lifting itself into the sky with what looked like a deceptive gentleness. Its wingtips caught seaspray as it turned to take off into the blue sky, backblast from its engines churning the surf behind it. The Bluebird taking off filled the world around it with turbulence until he thought the Tornado was bound to crash. Even as Tails wrestled it back into compliance, he was staggered by the sheer amount of force the other plane required to launch.

“Sorry!” said Tails with a grin, “Normally back at Resistance HQ they have warning lights and stuff, didn’t realise I was that close.” The others waved off his apology, and Tails touched a hand to the side of his helmet. He heard a tinny version of Lanolin’s voice, and realised his rabbit ears must be able to pick up the sound of Tails’ in-ear radio. “DC-1 to Fox Boy, DC-1 to Fox Boy. Do you read, Fox Boy?”

“Loud and clear, DC-1. Ready to go whenever you are, over.”

“Roger that, Fox Boy. Proceeding with Operation Crunchwrap Supreme.”

“Operation what now?”

“It was Tangle’s turn to pick the name, over.”

The Tornado followed behind Bluebird, below it and to its left. Izuku was surprised by how well the little biplane could keep up, but thinking back to the workshop it had been kept in he supposed he had no idea what it had under the hood. For all he knew, Tails had done things to the engine that would make Hatsume Mei blush.

When the giant red ship from earlier came into view, Tails pulled the biplane further away from Bluebird and through a bank of clouds. Explosions started to bust in the sky around Bluebird as the ship’s gun turrets activated and swivelled to engage the target. Just as they had planned, the other plane was the only threat that Eggman registered, and he focused all of his considerable firepower on the Diamond Cutters. Izuku would have felt guilty about leaving someone else to face danger without him, especially three people who seemed to be much more in line with his own world’s conception of pro heroes, but even as the thought occurred to him, the other plane began to dodge around the incoming fire.

Seeing their chance, Tails brought the Tornado around behind Eggman’s ship, struggling to balance staying out of view with staying out of the blast of its enormous engines. High up on its stern was a rolling door; it looked incongruously like the one Izuku might see on the front of any ordinary garage. The door rolled upwards and a squardron of bright red drones flew out to engage Bluebird in a dogfight. Before the hangar door could close again, Tails zipped the Tornado in and screeched it to a short halt on the hangar floor. Izuku was rattled around in his seat as the plane came to a stop, spinning on its wheels until it was nearly lined up with the exit. Izuku clambered out of his seat and Sonic and Amy hopped from the wings. Tails, who hadn’t even turned the engine off, revved it as soon as it was properly aligned with the slowly closing hangar doors and then leapt up out of the pilot’s seat. The plane soared into the blue sky, and Izuku hoped whatever remote control system the Diamond Cutters planned to use would work.

The hangar was a vast room crammed full of technology whose purpose Izuku could only guess at. He didn’t have long to stand and look, as almost immediately their little group was swarmed by robots like the ones that had attacked them on the ground. He wondered if the ship contained a workshop for producing them, or if it simply carried them in enormous quantities. He stopped his musings on abstract questions like that, and quickly began with more practical concerns such as not being impaled on the drill one of the robots was carrying. He leapt out of the way and landed with a roll, and even as he stood back up he could see that the others were all fighting their own bots.

The one with the drill lunged at him once more, and as he dodged the tool-turned-weapon he grabbed the side of it and hauled himself up and along to get face-to-face with the looming robot. He let the power of One For All surge through his body and kicked it, square between the eyes. His foot impacted its grinning face like a hammer blow, and the robot fell to the ground with its head crumpled and sparking.

He barely had time to enjoy his victory, as almost immediately he was once again under attack from all angles. He ducked under a wild swing from one robot, and then hopped back behind it in time for another to shoot it instead of him. He shoved his impromptu shield forwards, and when it collided with the gunbot he leapt at them to take both with a spinning kick. They flew over the developing melee and collided with the wall with a satisfyingly loud crash.

More robots were pouring into the room from all sides. He saw Tails fly up above the brawl holding some kind of tablet in a sturdy-looking yellow case. “This way!” exclaimed the fox as he pointed to one of the doors along the wall. Another bot reached up to grab him, but before it could so much as lay a finger on Tails, Amy jumped up and struck it with a worryingly large hammer. The unfortunate bot folded like an accordion as Tails shot her a thumbs-up.

With a goal to get to, at least Izuku had some sense of direction in the fight. He wasn’t just dealing with a swarm of robots like a deadly version of the UA entrance exam, he had a target and the means to get there. He worked his way through the crowd, fighting the ones he couldn’t dodge and dodging the ones that would take him too long to fight. Fortunately, most of the robots weren’t much to worry about, and the four of them managed to make their way to the door Tails had pointed out without injury. Tails shut the door behind them and then did something with his tablet that made the door make a series of unhealthy-sounding noises.

They quick-timed it through the ship, eager to reach their goal before more robots could find them. Away from the melee in the hangar, the ship was almost eerily quiet. Izuku would have expected to see crew at work, but there was nobody else around. That suited their purposes just fine, so he was hardly complaining, but it still struck him as odd.

They burst into the room expecting a fight, only to be met with more silence. The Wayward Waystone cast a bold pink glow even in the bright white light of the laboratory. Izuku found it difficult to look away, the stone seeming to impose itself upon the scene even as it sat idly in a glass canister.

A young girl appeared floating in mid-air, regarding them all with a cool, detached expression. After long enough at UA, Izuku recognised her as a hologram; though he wasn’t used to holograms being projected in real time as opposed to a recording. Her hair was white shot through with red, and she almost looked like she could be related to Todoroki.

“Father, they’re in lab Gamma-3” she said, in a tone of cool detachment.

“Aw, c’mon” said Sonic in a wheedling tone, “Couldn’t we just play this cool? Y’know, like on Starfall, towards the end?”

“That’s why I’m not having you shot right now”, replied the girl, “I understand that I owe you, but that doesn’t mean I can just ignore your presence.” Her eyes flicked to Izuku questioningly.

“Uh, hey”, he said, feeling a little awkward, “I’m Izuku, I’m new here.”

The hologram girl nodded a greeting. “Pleased to meet you. I’m Sage.”

“That’s nice, Sage. Uh, listen, I hate to impose but I really need the Wayward Waystone so I can leave this world and go back to my own one, and it’s kinda time-sensitive.” He heard footsteps, sounding like they were running towards him from several rooms away, “Uh, it’s kinda really time-sensitive. Listen, I’ll just be out of your hair and then we can all forget this ever happened, does that sound good?”

The door slid open, and Izuku winced as he recognised the man from earlier, flanked by robots that looked considerably meaner than the ones he had fought earlier. Some of the previous bots had carried guns, these ones had guns that looked like they were designed to pick a fight with All Might.

“It’s your choice”, said Sonic, “One way or another we need that stone. Are you gonna let us do this the easy way, or does it have to be the hard way?”

“Don’t give it to them, Sage!” demanded Dr Eggman, “No matter what, don’t let them get their grubby little paws on that stone!”

She nodded and then narrowed her eyes at the four of them, “Clearly, you cannot be deterred from seizing the Wayward Waystone. Very well.” A hatch opened in the side of the room, and Izuku was startled as cold air whipped around him – the hatch lead out into the open sky, and through it he could see a beautiful sunny day.

He heard mechanical sounds from behind him and turned just in time to see the Waystone being picked up by a robotic arm and loaded into a sophisticated-looking apparatus. The device glowed in concentric rings until the stone was launched out of the hatch like it had been shot from a canon.

“Go ahead and seize it, if you want it so much” said Sage with a quietly self-satisfied smirk on her face.

“Haha, attagirl!”

Izuku sighed. “Well, I guess this is goodbye. Tell Ms Vanilla thanks for me.”

Sonic nodded and replied, “Good luck”, while his friends looked a combination of confused and concerned.

They looked a lot more concerned as Izuku sprinted for the side of the ship and dived through the hole on his powerful rabbit legs, the power of One for All surging within him as he strained to reach the stone in time. The air raced past him, but all he could think of was grabbing the stone. It glowed bright, visible even in the sunlight, and he was sure he was getting closer to it – and sure he wasn’t getting there fast enough.

Black Whip raced along his arm, bursting from his outstretched grasping hand to lunge for the Wayward Waystone. The black tendrils clutched the stone, its vibrant light shining out between them wherever there was a gap. The glow intensified, and Izuku realised with a start that it was being joined by other shining lights in every colour he could imagine. Some of them, somehow, managed to shine bright blue upon the blue sky, others radiated a darkness that somehow glowed even as it boiled up and bubbled within the cerulean sky.

The stone was pulling him as they fell together, leading him towards one of the lights. It swirled with beautiful green shapes and patterns, and it grew as he was drawn towards it until it filled his vision, and he started to feel less like he was being pulled towards the light and more like he was falling into it. The air roared around his ears, joined by some other unearthly sound as the light became the horizon, and then the whole world.

And then he was gone.

Izuku had expected to see some kind of psychedelic tunnel of light as he travelled between universes, or perhaps visions of far off galaxies and nebulae exploding into life all around him. Instead, he simply blinked one moment in the air, and opened his eyes the next moment on the grass outside the UA dorms. Later, he would remember that Tokoyami liked to quote an author who had once said that the most merciful thing in the universe was the inability of the human mind to comprehend all of it at once, or words to that effect. Perhaps the sensation of travelling from one world to another was so far out that his brain had just refused to process it.

He looked around himself, turning on the spot to take all the familiar sights in. UA seemed calm; there certainly wasn’t any sign of a lockdown or manhunt that he could see. He heard a door open and spun to face the noise. To his delight, he saw his friends running out of the dorm building to meet him.

“Izuku!”

“What are you wearing?”

“Have you been cycling, ribbit?”

He looked down at his clothes, and was deeply relieved to find that they had indeed stretched to fit his larger human form. He had to admit the shorts were tighter than he’d normally prefer, and the shoes would probably never play the violin again, but it was a lot better than being naked. “Never mind that! How long have I been gone?”

“You’ve been missing for almost an hour”, said Todoroki with uncharacteristic emotion in his voice, “It’s been quite distressing.”

Uraraka floated over to him and dropped down to grab him by the shoulders, carefully keeping one finger on each hand raised to avoid sending him into the atmosphere. “We were so worried the League might have grabbed you!” She switched to hugging him, as tight as if she feared he might disappear on her again.

He could have collapsed with relief. “No, nothing like that. Uh, it is Sunday, isn’t it?”

“Yep! Sunday the 19^th, same as it ever was!”

He didn’t know how the flow of time varied between universes, but he was extremely glad that however it worked, he hadn’t missed class. Mr Aizawa would never have forgiven him, parallel worlds full of animal people or not. “Well… at least I still have time to get that homework finished for Midnight’s class tomorrow.” She’d assigned them an essay on the rise and fall of the cape as part of a hero’s costume, with a particular focus on how attitudes had shifted since All Might first arrived on the scene.

Iida paused for a moment and asked, “Didn’t you say you’d already done it?” It was good to see that even his friend disappearing and then reappearing couldn’t distract him from his relentless pursuit of academic excellence.

“Well…” Izuku prevaricated, “I mean, I’ve mostly done it, but every time I think I’m coming to the conclusion, I think of another hero I could mention, and then I have to go into whether they had a cape, or if it was more of a cloak sort of a situation. And on top of that you have, you know, did they have a mask, or was it a cowl, or a hood…” He wasn’t sure why his musings on the intricacies of pro hero costumes had his friends chuckling softly, but he was so glad to be back he figured it probably didn’t matter.

Chapter Text

Several days ago, in a laboratory hundreds of miles away

Approximately the same time as Izuku and Amy’s shopping trip

Dr Starline grinned as he set the samples he’d collected from the otherworldly visitor down on a bench. He didn’t know what kind of data he could glean from a human who had been transformed into a rabbit, but he’d have to be a fool to pass up a chance to collect information that could be so relevant to his own current project.

The laboratory had once belonged to Dr Eggman, though as was typical he had abandoned it as soon as it had stopped being ideal for his purposes. In the back of his mind Starline was aware that some people would call what he was doing squatting, though he preferred to think of it as recycling, or perhaps as simple efficiency. One never knew when discarded old things might come in handy, after all.

The two things that would one day be his servants slumbered in their glass tanks, unaware of the world around them as Starline began analysing the hair samples he had clipped from the rabbit. Green, he reflected, really was such a lovely colour. Perhaps he should consider it for one of his creatures – or better make it a more eye-catching shade. It wouldn’t do for her to fade into the background, after all.