Chapter Text

2031

Luz Noceda had gone through many firsts in her life. Firsts she was pretty sure were unique to her and her alone.

There were also the normal firsts, of course, like her first words, her first steps, her first job, her first, and if the both of them had anything to say about it, only girlfriend—wife now!—her first time cycling down the street going ‘look mamá, papá! No hands!’

…her first emergency visit to the doctor.

Her first childhood photo with an adorable tooth gap!

Around her, dark-green waves frothed and splashed against the island of slick, oiled rock, a jagged holdout against a raging sea that stretched out beyond the horizon.

Despite all her unique firsts though, her current situation was not a ‘first’ in any way, surprisingly.

Off to the side, far in the distance, an imposing cliff wall of equally jagged rock, natural yet oddly perfect spirals crystallized into any flat surfaces they could find, rose into the sky, as tall and insurmountable as the sea was wide. Even if the dark, nearly black storm clouds churning high above her had been absent, the other, equally large sea that used to look like an ankle-deep puddle had stretched so far up it’d look only like a starless night sky from below, details of its equally violent torrents and vortexes invisible at this distance.

So, for example, this was not her first time spending an extended period of time in the In-Between, even if it had begun to look wildly different from what it normally looked like. Emphasis on the wild.

That might just be because of the other current occupants though.

A small whipping sound coming from the looming storm clouds and a tug on her person got Luz into readying Stringbean, flashing off to the side in a stream of Arcane Purple and sparks of Thaumic Gold, narrowly dodging the stray black hole lobbed in her direction, which consumed a good chunk of the island and sea on its way through, leaving an Old Testament-like Red Sea in its wake that violently disappeared as water slammed against itself.

She thought it was water anyway. She wasn’t sure.

Anyway, it also wasn’t her first time working together with a godlike being to take down genocidal egomaniac tyrants!

“That better not have been a stray from you!” she shouted indignantly into the void—or wherever he was—as she steadied herself on the remaining crag of stone, preparing for the battle of a lifetime. They’d gun for her anytime now.

After eleven years of relative peace and quiet, ‘relative’ being important when it came to the Boiling Isles, chaos and mayhem once more found themselves attracted to the Demon Realm.

And it had all begun right on her birthday.

~~~

“Alright everyone, the Collector’s about to pass by!” Ever since her ‘King-ceañera’, which was so many years ago by now—geez, the time!—a spectacle in the sky to finish up Luz’s birthday had become tradition. The woman herself couldn’t feel more honored with the gesture.

Sure, plenty of things had changed in those years—the size of the gathering had shrunk to what was a small, tightly-knit, sociable group—but this was one thing that had—and would—remain the same.

Luz grinned up at the sky, now filled with the Collector’s signature waves of Celestial Blue and sparks of Manic Pink. “There! On the count of three! One-”

Except the count stopped as soon as it started.

“…Is the magic getting closer?” King asked cautiously, the past few years having lowered his voice by several pitches, though in height he had yet to beat any of them.

“Uh…I’m not sure-”

“They’re coming!” the voice that could only be the Collector’s, just as it had been all those years ago, rent the air with magical amplification.

The next second, a body slammed into the ground, shaking the table decked with plastic cups and a partly eaten cake.

Immediately, several of the crowd ran over to the new crater to check on their sudden arrival, their magical colors dissipating.

“Collector?” Luz asked worriedly, spotting the small figure dressed in pajama-like robes, looking like he’d been plucked straight from the time they’d last seen him in person. “Are you-”

“They’re coming!” he repeated frantically, shooting up from where he’d left a silhouette imprinted in the solid rock. “My siblings!”

At the proclamation, it was like a freezing spell had been cast on everyone in the clearing.

“They’re on their way here, right now!” he continued, voice high-pitched.

Luz was the closest one to notice the incoming freak-out, and hastily crossed the distance.

“Collector, Collector,” she began, coming to a stop and getting down on her haunches. “It’s alright, okay? Just tell us slowly.” Despite her slow speech, her mind was racing in barely subdued panic.

The Collector, breathed heavily, vibrant red eyes meeting hers. “The- The Archivists. I tried to stay around here and away from them, but they definitely noticed I’m not trapped anymore. And- And-”

He swallowed forcefully.

“Did you see them? Did they talk to you?” Luz asked worriedly. From the barest of information she had on them, both from Eda’s recollection of her Curse’s memories and the Collector’s own exposition, they sounded like terrible people for him to be around again.

The Collector shook his head, before turning and pointing up at the night sky. “Do you see that star? And that one? And those two?” Luz’s eyes flitted across the heavens to follow his finger. “They’re- They’re all moving here now.”

All she could do was take his word for it, realizing what those stars were, as his shoulders slumped.

“I didn’t want them to know,” he said, worryingly quiet. “But they do, and they know a titan has to be alive for me to be free again, so they’re coming back.”

Luz shivered at the thought. She paused, unsure of what to do, and glanced over her shoulder at Amity, standing a few feet away from them.

Her fiance nodded and turned to the crowd gathered at the edge of the crater.

“Everyone, out! Party’s over! Forget what you heard and wait until we have more information, or I’ll make you.”

Aw, her sweet potato made the best threats.

What was left of the gathering—herself and Amity, King, Eda, mom and Vee, and the Collector obviously—had moved to the living room of the Owl House, where they nervously waited for the Collector to speak up again.

The struggle to not try and pry and let him speak up on his own had led some to performing idle tasks, or wandering off into the kitchen, but Luz remained firmly on the couch, sitting next to the Collector at arm’s length, waiting for-

“Alright kiddo, time to spill. How screwed are we?”

“Eda!” Luz scowled at her mentor slash chosen parent, who returned it unapologetically.

Okay, so maybe she was just as impatient and would’ve cracked and spoken up in a minute too, but still!

Her focus returned to the small immortal sitting beside her, knees brought up and hiding his face. To her, it was obvious the state of mind he was currently in.

“Hey,” she began softly, scooting closer. Sure, most people who heard ‘Luz Noceda’ would probably not associate the name with ‘good with kids,’ not with how she was more likely to ‘act the kid’ rather than ‘act the adult,’ but she helped Amity out at the library a lot. She’d gotten to know her way around young kids very well in all that time.

“Something my papá used to tell me, is that when there’s a lot of bad on your mind, try and match one good thing for each bad one to clear things out.” She paused for a moment, before adding, “No matter how small.” Because, y’know, potentially genocidal omnipotent space gods coming right for them was definitely hard to balance out with positivity.

Thankfully her partly botched delivery—hey, the original was in Spanish!—came through, as the Collector quietly shifted his head, his eyes no longer shielded by his knees.

“Okay, so…” he began slowly, still not meeting anyone’s eyes. “When they get here, they won’t care about witches, demons, humans, or the Isles?”

“They’ll leave them alone?” Amity asked. Oh, yeah, there was a big difference between ‘leaving alone’ not caring and ‘flatten insects under their sparkly—probably?—boots’ not caring.

To everyone’s immense relief, the Collector nodded confidently, which was big, really. After all, the Collector would know the Archivists best, and if he said they wouldn’t even bother with anyone…

Well, barring the one person in the room not included on the list.

King stepped forward from the corner of the room with unease, looking extra awkward with the classic lanky, spindly limbs of mid-puberty. “Would they go away if they couldn’t find me?”

The Collector gave him a nod, before immediately dashing any newfound hopes by following that up with, “After a few centuries of searching they’ll get impatient.” Yikes. Immortal timescales, geez. “But they can travel faster than any of you, and they can always figure out where I am. And they know the properties of Titan’s Blood, so they’ll look through the Human Realm and other nearby ones too.” Double yikes. After all, if the Collector could make a portal door, the others definitely could. And while the Isles was familiar with godlike beings, places like Earth…

Wait, other- No, not important.

There was only one thing left to conclude. Luz gave the others one last glance, seeing grim, understanding looks, before meeting eyes with the Collector again.

“So we have to fight.”

The Collector nodded at her, a jerking gesture, before his eyes widened dramatically.

“But! But!” he began as he jumped up on the couch, suddenly looking impossibly excited. “Good thing! We have the one person in existence more powerful than them to fight them off!”

“You?”

The Collector giggled at Vee’s question. “No, silly! They’re definitely better at magic than me. And that’s four against one. Super unfair!”

Suddenly, Luz understood, and couldn’t help but give him a chiding look. “We’re not having King fight the Archivists, Collector.” That was the exact opposite of what they should do! Besides, “His powers are still growing in.” His wings had only just started developing, their only sign for now being a stiffness in his back, which he’d been complaining about at every conceivable moment. And his glyph magic was at a scale of power only a magnitude greater than regular witch spells.

“Yeah, duh!” the Collector answered. “A full-grown titan is more powerful than anything. King’s nowhere near his prime!”

“Hey, I’m almost an adult!” King objected.

The Collector blinked at him, apparently not having known that. “Yeah, in normal years, but titans grow up slower and slower super fast the older they get. You’re like- uh, a human of fourteen.” So like dog years, except King wasn’t the dog. “And it’ll take two centuries at least before you start entering your prime!”

Oh, that was a long puberty.

The entire group winced in solidarity.

“But Collector,” Luz started again, regaining his attention. “Then who are you talking…”

Oh.

“Collector,” she tried again, trying to ease him into disappointment. “I can’t repeat what I did with Belos; the Titan’s passed on for good now. And even if I could, I’m only a few years older than King.”

And yet, the Collector remained as excited as ever as he stared her down. “Sure you can! It’s all still there. You still have the same body King’s dad made after you- uh…when-”

“When I turned to light,” she completed softly, the Collector nodding as he hastily moved on.

“Yeah! And he made your new body exactly so all of his power could be stuffed into it without hurting you. It even changed for you when it couldn’t hold it all as your normal shape!”

Luz blinked, taken aback. “Me turning fluffy and badass wasn’t just for aesthetic and fan service?” she mumbled, not having expected to ever have that revelation.

“So yeah, you still have that body, so it can still do that! And all of King’s dad’s power is still lying around here, so all you need is to have King jumpstart you with his own and then figure out how to draw his dad’s power in by yourself!”

That sounded awesome! But-

“Will I- Would I really be powerful enough to fight them off?” she couldn’t help but ask.

The Collector’s smile stretched from ear to ear. “Definitely! Last time when you took his power you could do all the things titans could when they were the human equivalent of fourteen.” And that tracked, because King’s powers were currently just like hers had been.

So if whatever happened back then—becoming some kind of warlock?—turned her into the titan equivalent of her own age, and she was currently right in what people considered the prime of their life…

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” Amity voiced Luz’s thoughts as she came up next to her. “But they might be right. If it works out, you’ll be the only one who has a chance at fighting them off.”

In the background, Luz could see her mamá and Eda exchanging weary looks.

“All on her own?”

“I’m sticking around too!” the Collector said loudly—perhaps a bit too loudly, as Luz and a few others winced at the sudden volume.

He didn’t seem to notice though, only satisfied to have become the center of attention again.

“There’s a bunch of titan stuff you and King don’t know about. And King’s dad isn’t around anymore to help out, so…”

Right, the Collector had actually been around in Titan society for some time, before it all ended. He would know things others couldn’t even dream of knowing.

It was clear King had the realization at the same time, his eyes widening and gaining an excited glint.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” he began urgently, the room gearing up to explode in a flurry of activity. “They could get here any moment!”

The Collector nodded rapidly. “Yeah, we only have three years!”

And just like that, the room collectively came to a screeching halt, Luz halting halfway through getting off the couch.

“I’m sorry,” mom said. “Three years?”

“Mhm! They’re coming here as fast as possible. Barely enough time to train up!”

Luz ignored mom’s exasperated. “Ay dios mío,” in favor of sitting back down.

“Collector, we thought we only had hours or days to prepare, not years.” It was an easy assumption to make. Really, when confronted with the existence of all-powerful space deities—the ‘youngest’ of which could move a moon like it was an app on a touch screen—it was hard to imagine they couldn’t cross the known universe in two to three business days.

Then again, it was also easy to forget that someone who looked like an eight-year-old had been around for millions of years at the bare minimum. His sense of time had to be super screwed up.

The Collector gave her an innocent, confused stare. “But then you’d all definitely be screw-”

“Okay!” Eda suddenly spoke up, clapping her hands together. “That’s enough for tonight. Let’s leave the rational thinking for tomorrow.”

“I’m getting back to Masha,” Vee agreed, heading for the front door and turning the knob the wrong way, allowing it to open to the old shack in Gravesfield.

The rest of the small group murmured with each other, the pressure of limited time slipping away, and Luz couldn’t exactly say she wasn’t feeling that same sort of relief.

The only one who didn’t was the Collector, who was scanning the room with confused, uncertain glances as the group headed out for the night.

Luz cast a glance at Amity and her mom, who both looked like they’d be having at least one conversation with her before she could turn in for bed, and decided she needed a very quick conversation with the Collector first.

“Hey, Collector?” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder, ignoring just how soft and silky his pajamas were. The confused, uncertain look was now directed at her. “Don’t worry too much, okay? We managed to take out Belos when he possessed the Heart with no preparation at all.” She held out and clenched her fist with a grin. “We’re gonna be so ready to kick some Archivist butt by the time they get here in three years.”

He nodded, the tension broken by a giggle, because ‘butt’ was hilarious to every kid, no exceptions.

And much to her surprise, Luz actually found herself believing her own words as well.

After all, they had the Collector, and she’d have three years to train her awesome anime-esque power-up she thought had been just a one-off with King. There was no world where they wouldn’t kick Archivist butt and settle things back to normal. Or a new normal, at least.

They had to.

~~~

2031

Back in the In-Between, shaking herself out of her memories, Luz’s bony claws tightened around Stringbean’s staff. Her wings twitched in agitation behind her as dark silhouettes coalesced within the blanket of storm clouds, two heading straight for her.

No more reminiscing

Her magic flared around her as she lowered herself and spread her wings. The remains of the stony crag were vaporized as she launched herself up with a magic-aided flap of her wings, flying off into the fight of a lifetime.

Hopefully the new normal they were fighting for wouldn’t be too different from what they had now, both for Earth and the Demon Realm.

2194

Today was a quiet summer day for Midoriya Izuku.

That didn’t actually mean much. Every summer day was a quiet one for him, if he was lucky.

When he wasn’t lucky, he either ran into Kacchan and his entourage, or Kacchan had decided to pay him a visit instead, which never ended well.

Though that counted for every day of the year, even if it was way more likely to happen during schooldays. But the more than a month period without school was, in a way, far worse than the rest of the year, and just a few days in, Izuku was feeling the full brunt of it.

Without the constant presence of school, homework and studying, it became painfully obvious just how alone he was. Where others met up with friends and went on vacations with their families, Izuku could only try to entertain himself with his toys, the home computer, heading out for Tatooin shopping district, or what he was currently doing, sitting at a quiet part of the lakeside of the local park, in the shade provided by a large cluster of trees, quietly sketching his view of the lake in a notebook.

Even his birthdays, falling in summer break, supposed to be the highlight of his summer, were a reminder of his life. Ever since his official diagnosis the day after his fifth birthday, the celebration had turned into a two people event, the perfect representation of his summers since then.

He wouldn’t have thought of doing this kind of sketching normally, but he already had sketches for every entry in his latest Hero Analysis for the Future volume, had used up his computer time for the day, and stores had closed. His mom still had her own things to do, and he didn’t want to take up all her time for every hour of every day, especially not when she was doing all the household chores and preparing dinner, so there was nothing else he could think of doing this afternoon. And maybe he’d get better at detailing if he tried something other than people. Or that was the excuse he was using to try this and forget about his troubles anyway.

Izuku didn’t think finishing elementary school and starting at Aldera Junior High next year was going to change anything for him either. While it was a bleak prospect, he’d come to terms with these lonely summers a long time ago. Maybe high school would change things around, if his dreams managed to come true, but…

Sketching his surroundings was pretty relaxing, actually. Even if he doubted he’d do this again.

Putting down his pencil, Izuku sighed as he took in the shaky lines and his attempts at replicating the trees beyond the lake. It was very obvious drawing people in hero costumes was completely different from this, and he sucked at it, something he couldn’t help but mutter out loud.

“Aw, chin up, buddy. Practice makes perfect. You’ll be cranking out Starry Nights in no time!”

Izuku startled at the voice. Had someone snuck up on him and overheard? That was way too close!

A hasty, jerky scan of his surroundings revealed nobody in peeking distance.

Movement caught his attention, and without realizing it, Izuku’s eyes focused in on the lake beyond his feet, where-

“Whoa, d’you hear me?” the person in the lake asked.

In the-

Izuku jolted forward, plunging his arms into the cool lake on instinct.

“Ma’am?” he shouted worriedly as his hand flailed wildly through the water, trying to grasp the submerged woman. Instead of a person though, his hand only brushed past the dirt and pebbles of the shallow lake bed beneath.

He blinked, panic turning to confusion, and slowly pulled his arm out of the lake. Despite the ripples distorting the surface, the tan-skinned woman was still visible below.

“You can see me?” the woman asked, her eyes boring into him with an almost intimidating, supernatural intensity.

“Yes?” he squeaked out, trying to break contact with the golden irises. It didn’t help that she looked about the same age as his mom.

The woman’s eyes widened, and Izuku’s natural curiosity took that moment to kick in, unable to be curbed any longer by nerves.

He lowered his head to the water, looking at the woman from the side, cheek nearly touching the surface.

His eyes bugged out at what he saw.

“You’re projected on the water’s surface?” he asked excitedly, shooting back up to look at her straight-on, forgetting about nerves altogether. “Is that your quirk?”

“Hm?” the woman returned, sounding dazed and distant for a moment, before seeming to return to reality. “Oh! Uh- yeah! It’s my power, yep.” She looked on sheepishly, a far cry from her first stare. “It’s like scrying. If I say someone’s name, any reflective surface turns into a window for me to see them through.” She frowned, pulling at a lock of her curly brown hair. “Nobody but my brother’s ever seen or heard me like this though.”

That was such a cool quirk! But also… “You were watching me?” he asked, apprehensive, wondering how he hadn’t noticed her earlier. He’d always noticed when Kacchan or his hangers-on had their eyes on him. A necessary skill to have acquired over the years.

“Only for a few seconds,” she answered, shrugging. “I was looking through the lake, just hanging around when I heard you. Can’t control where I can see through, only when I stop, and I’ve not appeared in a lake in a while, so I was enjoying the views. The one time I saw through the Pacific during a storm though.” She shuddered. “But yeah, I don’t wanna be a creep, but where I am there’s nothing to do, so I mostly just check up on some famous people I know and see what they’re up to in public, like personal TV channels.”

She abruptly perked up, grinning. “Hey, wanna know production secrets about the upcoming All Might movie? Those actors are killing it on set.”

Yes! “Uh…no?” Izuku managed to say instead, morality just barely squeaking out the win. “Why are you telling me?” Any fear or shock he’d started out with had long been replaced with confusion and a dash of interest.

The woman in the lake paused, before turning sheepish.

“Ah, whoops. Sorry, I get overeager really quickly when I’m excited. Don’t really have anyone to—well, except my brother, but he’s super busy with his family, so…”

Izuku frowned, feeling a pang in his heart at the nonchalant admission and the following mumble.

“Where are you from?” he asked. What place had nobody to talk to? Or was it something else?

The woman seemed to have recovered from her brief dip, eyes shining.

“I’m all American, baby!” she proclaimed, bumping her fist against her chest, before pausing. “Well, Dominican-American. I bet you didn’t even realize,” she added with a grin.

“Your Japanese is- It’s really good,” Izuku admitted. He indeed hadn’t even realized, with how fluent she’d sounded. But thinking back on it, her first sentence, the one that had caught him off-guard, had been in English, hadn’t it? And her appearance, despite how diverse quirks had made those, didn’t look Japanese at all.

Besides the eyes, she actually looked very plain, even compared to him.

“Thank you!” She beamed at him. “Learned it all on my own. I love anime, manga, and light novels, and there’s always translator hoopla and drama in the way, so what better way to avoid that than by going straight to the source and learning the language, right?”

Despite the strange situation, Izuku felt his lips tug up at her infectious enthusiasm.

That enthusiasm abruptly cut off though when she shook her head. “Sorry, keep getting distracted. You won’t have to worry about me creeping around, alright? Without your name I can’t even pop up near you, and we probably won’t stumble into each other again.” She smiled again, though it seemed lesser than before. “I’ll move to the other side of the lake if you want. That way you can get your alone time back. You looked really in the zone there.”

Izuku found himself nodding along automatically, unsure of what to say. He only stopped when he noticed the woman’s eyes dimmed ever so slightly.

It…didn’t sound like she wanted to.

Did he want his alone time back? He had so much of it anyway. And, much to his surprise, despite the shock and strangeness of the encounter, talking to the woman so far had been much better than anyone else he’d interacted with, besides his mom and a kind elderly couple from the apartment complex.

But most importantly, the look in her eyes. She looked…

Before she could do as she’d promised and move away, Izuku spoke up again.

“You don’t appear in lakes a lot?” he asked.

The woman huffed. “Famous people rarely walk past lakes apparently.” She smiled “Got lucky this time though. Lots of ducks to watch, and the trees here are beautiful.”

Izuku pushed aside the question of which famous person had walked past this lake not too long ago, wondering how he’d completely missed that.

“What…What if I sit here again tomorrow?” he finally suggested, fighting off the nerves.

She blinked at him, looking genuinely surprised.

“You sure?” she asked, cocking a brow. “I’m a lot older than I look, y’know. Definitely not ‘hip with the kids.’ I’m sure you have friends to spend the time with instead of hanging out with an odd otter lady.”

Wasn’t it ‘crazy cat’ lady?

Strangely, while she did look like his mom’s age, and if she was telling the truth, even older than that. Yet, to Izuku, it didn’t feel like talking to an adult. Only a little. Mostly right now.

And the look in her eyes…

Izuku realized he’d already made up his mind.

“My name’s Midoriya Izuku,” he greeted, bowing briefly. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He then immediately remembered she was American, and stuck out his hand for a handshake.

And because he completely forgot in the moment she was only on the lake’s surface, his hand just went into the water.

His cheeks heated up, but it’d be even more embarrassing to retract his hand now. Rather than laugh, however, the woman instead goggled at the halfway-submerged hand instead.

“Oh wow, that looks really weird from here. Like an anatomy cross-section.”

She smiled up at him and extended her own hand, which obviously resulted in a failed handshake.

“I’m Luz,” the now named woman returned cheerfully, pretending the handshake went through anyway. “Nice to meet you too!”

Izuku nodded and retracted his hand, before realizing, “No last name?”

“Oh, I have one,” she answered cryptically, before pointing a dramatically accusatory finger at him. “But I know you guys! The moment I give my last name it’s the only thing you’ll ever call me.” She crossed her arms with a playful huff. “Heard enough of that one back in school, thank you.”

Maybe the most surprising thing of all in this situation was the way Izuku couldn’t fight back a giggle.

He’d never actually spoken to foreigners before, nevermind speaking to someone who was literally across the globe right now, but only using last names, even with friends, had to sound strange from an American’s perspective.

Of course, Izuku normally wouldn’t be found dead being so familiar with someone he’d barely met, but maybe this could be an exception? It’s not like she had the same expectations as anyone from Japan.

“Aw, your giggle’s adorable,” the woman- Luz cooed, her hands twitching like they wanted to pinch his cheeks.

Which were heating up again, something he didn’t want to put attention on any longer. Now she definitely felt like an adult.

“So- So I can sit here again at the same time tomorrow?” he suggested.

“You don’t have to,” Luz said, still looking like she wanted to coo at him. “Heck, you could just tell me you’ll sit here once a week and get busy drawing while I pop up and move away or something. Knowing me I’ll probably get sick of lakes soon enough anyway, or I might even forget to show up altogether.”

“Uh, I don’t actually know if I’ll draw again…” He didn’t want to give that impression. And he had no idea what else to do in this place besides sit…and talk?

“Hey, don’t put yourself down if this is your first try,” she said, reminding him of what she’d said to start this entire conversation. “Can I see? I used to draw and paint a lot.”

Izuku’s eyes flitted to the notebook sitting innocently on the grass next to him. From her viewing angle she probably couldn’t actually see anything beyond his face and upper body.

He felt a little self-conscious at the thought of sharing his shoddy sketch, but then he saw the puppy dog eyes Luz was making.

With some reluctance, he picked up his notebook and turned it so she could see his double-spread sketch, taking care not to drop it into the lake.

Down below, Luz’s face lit up. “Oh wow! If that’s your first attempt you really are gonna crank out Starry Nights in no time.”

“The trees are all wrong,” Izuku pointed out, feeling the need to defend…his inner critic?

“They still look like trees,” she rebutted. “And it’s not like you have to replicate what you’re looking at. Heck, why draw real trees at all? Go nuts!” She seemed to adjust herself with…something—Izuku couldn’t actually see her surroundings, wherever she was. “I bet you could do a lot more if you started working with color, or practiced making a black-white gradient with your pencil, that way you can work with more details and give your sketches more depth and shading!”

As Luz happily continued giving him what sounded like- well, sound advice, Izuku couldn’t help but feel like maybe this summer wouldn’t be as lonely as he’d been preparing himself for.

Chapter Text

2029: Two Years Before Arrival

Luz groaned as she was mercilessly dragged back into the waking world, where small aches and pangs plagued her.

“Morning, Batata,” the most heavenly, soothing voice graced her ears.

“Morning, Hermosa,” she returned warmly, before noticing the lack of light streaming through the curtains. “…Is it?”

Amity sent her a blank look before glancing at the alarm clock, displaying a big 3 in blood red. “If you’re being generous,” she drawled, before sighing. “You really should stop falling asleep before dinner. You’re wrecking your sleep and eating schedules.”

Luz pouted. Dagnabbit, this was the umpteenth time! “But the bed looks so inviting after all that grueling training.” She paused, zeroing in on the bags under Amity’s eyes and the streaks of Abomination goop. “Wait, why are you awake at three in the morning?”

“I put your portion of dinner in stasis,” Amity diverted effortlessly, assisted by the immediate grumble from Luz’s stomach.

Luz beamed at her and hopped out of bed, only wincing slightly from the lingering muscle pain. Speaking of people who should be sleeping though. “Hey, is the Collector sleeping?”

The Collector’s arrival on Luz’s twenty-second birthday had heralded a litany of changes to the status quo. Of course there was the impending danger that she was now training for, but the Collector sticking around from then on was equally impactful.

When the Collector had said he was gonna stick around to help them, Luz had immediately objected to the idea of him just wandering the Isles for the next three years, something basically everyone important agreed on, even if that was mostly from a pragmatic standpoint rather than an empathetic one.

That was immediately followed up by Eda saying she couldn’t be the one to take him in. And Luz agreed. After all, needing to deal with both King and Hooty living in the same place was one thing, especially when she was also the headmistress of the Isles’ premier university and still battling the stress from her curse. Adding a second god-like being to the household sounded a bit too trying, even for someone as amazing as Eda.

And so, after a brief but intense exchange of glances and other nonverbal ways of communication with her fiancee, Luz and Amity had offered to let him room with them, something the Collector had agreed to, not understanding the need for it but not minding the idea of someone making meals for him. Not something he needed , but definitely enjoyed.

Really, the timing of his arrival couldn’t have been better, with Luz just having graduated from university, getting engaged, and having found—moreso built—the perfect cottagecore fantasy cottage to live in with her partner, they were the perfect pick.

Back in the present, Amity answered Luz’s question with, “I think he’s on the roof again.”

Like eating, the Collector didn’t need sleep, but he clearly found it fun to dream, and he got cranky if he didn’t sleep for over two weeks. Not to mention getting Earth bedtime stories read out to him.

Well, that had actually been phased out over the past year.

“I’ll go check,” Luz decided, patting Amity on the back. “You go sleep.”

Amity didn’t retort, enough proof she needed sleep, and Luz headed for the attic, where she could climb through the attic window and access the roof.

Just a quick peek was enough to see the Collector silhouetted against the Demon Realm’s full moon, legs dangling over the edge.

“Hey bud,” she said, not having to worry about startling him into a deadly drop. “What’re you stargazing for?” She carefully sat down next to him, her legs joining his, and stared up into the sky. By now, she was very familiar with which four were of any real interest.

“Your siblings won’t be here for another two years, right?” she asked, looking away from the starry night sky and at the Collector.

He nodded silently, much to her relief, his scarlet eyes briefly glancing at her before affixing themselves to the night sky again.

Back when they’d volunteered to take the Collector in, they’d known it’d be a difficult task—nevermind his overwhelming cosmic powers. No, the hardest part had always been teaching their new roommate about things from a mortal being’s perspective, and the most obvious sign of how difficult a task that would be was the otherworldly glint shining in his eyes.

It was an unsettling sign that constantly reminded everyone that, despite his child-like demeanor, who they were dealing with was an ancient being that could turn eldritch horror on them all without even meaning to, on the flip of a dime or from a simple misunderstanding. It was equally as much a reminder that those eyes were as far removed from being able to view the world from a mortal being’s perspective as possible. How did you even approach teaching a being as alien as that? Someone who’d been around for millions or billions of years and could play with entire worlds however he wanted?

After all, at the start, the only morals and concepts the Collector truly even knew and understood was that ‘fibbing on promises is bad,’ ‘threatening, scaring, toying with, and harming people and animals weaker than you is a big no-no,’ and that mortality existed and people who died could never be fixed, and all those had been learned from personal experience. That left out a lot of fundamental things that seemed like a given to anyone who wasn’t the Collector. Truly an insane, impossible task.

So of course Luz, Amity, and anyone else who was willing took on the challenge with all the gusto they could muster, sometimes forsaking their own interests and free time. It had been, and still was a daunting, slow and exhausting process that took place every single day over the course of the past year.

And to Luz’s delight, it was paying off! The gap the Collector’s immortality and alien nature had created between him and everyone else was slowly being whittled away at. Their explanations and lessons and experiences were starting to stick. That alien, unsettling glint always present in his eyes? It dimmed and shifted to the edges a little bit more every day, was slowly taking a backseat to a softer, empathetic, more human tint. Their celestial roommate’s understanding of mortality and outlook on the world was slowly expanding and maturing, and it was easier and easier for him to go out and be around the denizens of the Isles without standing out in the crowd just from his presence alone—nevermind his appearance.

Speaking of. Much to everyone’s surprise, the Collector’s physical body was changing to reflect the maturation of his mentality, and fast too. In this very moment, he looked exactly like a twelve-year-old instead of eight, with his white hair grown out and pulled into a braid, courtesy of Amity, and his adorable pajamas permanently switched out for comfy pants, custom sneakers, and a hoodie.

It was surprising that the Collector could change so much in just a year, grow up so quickly, when he’d remained exactly the same for millions, if not billions of years before then. And all it had taken was him living with and among mortals on the Isles.

It had made them wonder. If the Archivists’ sworn goal was to preserve all life in the universe…then wouldn’t that include one of their own?

But with maturation came more introspection and self-awareness—came moments like right now, where the otherwise always vocal and energetic Collector remained silent and pensive.

“Hey, what’s on your mind?” she asked softly, keeping her eyes on him. “Mind sharing?”

There was some silence, and then-

“…What if I leave and meet them halfway?”

Luz blinked, her mind stuttering to a halt.

His eyes drifted to her. “I could- I could tell them me getting freed was a fluke. That- That King’s dad gave you his powers when you- you died, to defeat Belos and the Draining Spell, and before the powers faded you freed me.”

He smiled at her, a sort of manic excitement. “Right? If they think King doesn’t exist, then they- they’ll leave this place alone! And you won’t have to train so much or worry all the time! Nobody has to risk anything!”

As the Collector continued his manic explanation, Luz’s expression softened.

“But you would, Collector,” she returned, giving him pause. “Will they believe you? Could you actually meet up with them?” After all, they were approaching from completely different directions. And most importantly, “And even if they do believe you, what will they do with you? Make you join them again?”

Truth be told, Luz felt awful, seeing his hopeful expression die a slow death as she put him down. It was in moments like this that she actually understood how hard it must’ve been for her mom when she was ‘strongly advised’ by the school to sign her up for Camp Reality Check.

She put a hand on his shoulder. “None of us want to send you off to see your siblings, and definitely not on your own.” Not after the stories they’d heard over the past year, when the Collector didn’t fully realize the extent of what he was spilling.

Maybe he did now.

A quiet sniffle broke the resulting silence, and without warning Luz found herself weakly held in a sideways hug.

“I don’t think I want them to be my siblings anymore,” he whispered. And like the admission had been the breach, more came flooding out the broken dam. “Preserver was the only one who was nice and took care of me, along with all the live specimen, but she always listened to the others. Seeker always liked scaring me and riling me up and tricking me. Scribe only cared if I messed up their orders and was always angry about something. And Archive”—he shuddered—“It only ever interacted with Scribe and didn’t care about anything but itself and archiving .” His hand gripped a hem in her blouse. “I don’t want them as my siblings.”

Luz felt her heart break just a little at the more resolved tone as she returned the weak embrace with a gentle but firm hold.

“They aren’t. And they don’t have to be,” she reassured him. “Just like how I chose King, Vee, and Hunter to be my siblings, you can choose to not be theirs.”

There was another sniffle. “But if I’m not their sibling, if I’m not the Collector…then who am I?”

His head shifted up, giving Luz a first-row view to the scared, lost expression filling his eyes.

She returned a smile. “You’re a person, like the rest of us. Witches, demons, humans, titans, and even celestial beings like you. We’re all people,” she answered easily.

The lost expression was replaced with a less heavy confusion as he pulled away from her.

“And ‘the Collector’ isn’t who you are. That’s just a title,” she soldiered on. “Every person can have titles. They can be basic, made-up, given to you by others, insignificant or super important. Some of mine are ‘the human witch,’ ‘the Titan’s warlock,’ ‘the biggest Azura fan’”—her smile faltered—“‘The weirdo,’ ‘the luzer.’” She swallowed the feelings away. “Some titles we love, and others…we’d rather just leave them behind and hope we’ll get to forget about them eventually.”

The Collector—though with their current conversation, Luz didn’t feel the best calling them that—nodded, showing their understanding. And she understood too. If they wanted nothing to do with the Archivists, then going by a title so closely tied to them had to feel conflicting.

“But even without titles, every person can have a name,” she said, some enthusiasm creeping into her voice. “And you, mister, might be long overdue for one.”

Their eyes locked with hers again, shocked.

“I can have one?” they asked with an almost painful childlike innocence.

Luz pushed that hurt down and beamed at them. “Sure you can, bud! The world’s your oyster! You can take any name you want!”

They returned her smile, and she knew for sure it was one she was never gonna forget.

Though the moment was interrupted by an uneasy frown. “But…there’s so many! How would I know what to pick?”

Ah, well these were much easier topics to tackle, at least.

“Well, you don’t have to be the only one searching for one,” she replied, tapping her head, before hesitation hit. “But- uh…I’m not the best with coming up with things on the spot”—case in point ‘Luzura’ and most of her OC placeholder names—“so give me until tomorrow to figure something out?” Would later in the day, after the sun had risen, still count as tomorrow?

They giggled. “Why would it take so long? It’s just one word.”

“Well, it’s an important word,” Luz chided with a theatrically stern expression. “You shouldn’t just get any name. It should be one that fits . Or else I could call you ‘Mr. Wiggle-butt’ and stop right there.”

They giggled again, even louder this time—because ‘butt’ always worked!—but nodded to show that, while they didn’t really understand, they would let her do things her way. Luz grinned and ruffled their hair in a sneak attack, reinvigorating the adorable sound a second time, before asking them if they wanted to share her preserved portion of dinner together back inside.

That morning, Luz started her newest endeavor. She’d pick a name after some thinking, and then she and others used it, and only it, to refer to them. After a few days of gauging their reaction she’d pick a new name and repeat the process.

For a while, it felt like nothing was going to work, much to their building consternation, and while Luz didn’t share their frustration, it did feel a little disheartening after a while.

But when the moment finally came, almost two months in, where she’d greeted them at breakfast with a peppy ‘morning, Jamie!’ and she and Amity bore witness to the way his expression lit up in delight and realization; that was what made it all worth it.

2031

RISE

Just in time, in the blink of an eye, a mountain shot up and appeared from the In-Between waters.

Well, Luz didn’t actually know if it was mountain-sized or bigger. Changing size was one thing she’d gained mastery over, something that only worked without limitations for her in the In-Between, and she’d lost track of that over the course of the fight. She had no idea if she was her normal size, or if she was taller than the Empire State Building right now.

Not even a moment later and the top half of the mountain was obliterated by a fist made of stardust.

Luz ignored the burning in her throat as she flashed high up in the air, hiding herself among the rubble.

Contrary to poor, three-years-in-the-past her’s expectations, utilizing the full power and might of a titan was a far cry from the spell circles and holographic glyphs she’d conjured back when she was fourteen.

No, spell circles, palismen, and glyphs to titans were, at best, decent training wheels for how they actually wielded magic. And without their unique source of information, combined with an awesome discovery on the planet’s pole—a titan’s head with its brain perfectly preserved in the deadly cold, physical mindscape within and all—neither Luz nor King would’ve ever figured out anything beyond that.

Then again, King’s very first magical ability being a roar made of raw magic could’ve clued them in.

Turns out, titans spoke magic into doing their bidding. With that revelation, Luz had felt especially stupid. After all, they’d all concluded that the Titan’s glyphs had been just like a language, and a written one at that, one she’d used to communicate with The Titan to do magic. So why wouldn’t there be a spoken equivalent as its source?

Luz hadn’t gotten to actually try it out herself after that revelation for quite a while though. After all, King first had to get enough of a grasp on his power to help ‘jumpstart’ her body into going into what she’d termed ‘warlock mode,’ and then she had to figure out how to use the bit of King’s power to hold onto the Isles’ ambient power without an ancient magic ghost around to hold and pull the strings from inside her, because King’s power was nowhere near enough for any real fighting.

But that first time she had all of that under control and figured out how to channel magic through her voice and Speak had been awesome…and intimidating.

Think less talking and more Words of Power, except even further beyond that, because any shout she vocalized sounded less like a physical noise carried by sound waves, and more like a command that was imprinted into reality itself. Even some passerby’s who’d gotten caught on the edges during training sessions had claimed to hear it.

Some were born deaf.

No wonder baby titans had monarch complexes. Their parent could literally command reality itself, like it was their loyal subject. And also no wonder King had never used his vocal chords to communicate! The strange telepathy-like talking that sounded exactly like he was talking from his mouth had been something she’d questioned but quickly gotten used to way back when.

The gigantic hand made of stardust swept the rubble away with a gust of wind, and Luz shouted

FADE

to make the stardust disperse.

A low, earth-trembling grumble came from beyond.

And even now, after three years of constant training, Luz’s magical ability was still woefully lacking compared to an actual titan’s. After all, she was mostly using only singular English words, not titan language, which was a complete headache to think about, and only while being in her warlock form could she even attempt to think about or speak it.

After all, if glyph combos were the written form of a spell in their language, then how did you efficiently vocalize ‘top-left inverted plant glyph on second order intersect circuit,’ which was only one part of many in a full spell?

Apparently—after hearing some real examples through that one titan’s physical mindscape—by using many different types of noises that all overlapped to form one whole.

It certainly explained why the branch of bard magic was so prominent, being on the same level as the other eight main branches, especially when any of its effects could be replicated by at least one of the others. It was because, to a non-titan’s mind, the language could only be interpreted as music, not speech.

Bard music was the closest witches and demons could get to the way their progenitor god did magic, and that obviously had some pretty strong cultural significance.

And for Luz it took too much learning, training, migraines, and focus to cast in Titanic—the language, not the movie—so she’d only learned how to do the ones that were absolutely vital to any of their combat plans.

Okay, focus! Take this one out!

The one thing she knew for sure was that the Archivists’ only way of fighting someone with Titan powers was to hide away and throw things at her, hoping it’d incapacitate or kill her. After all, Titan magic quite literally outclassed Celestial magic.

Imagine thinking you were the pinnacle of existence for millions or billions of years, and then you encounter a species stuck on some watery dust ball that can completely override your all-powerful magic.

And that advantage was literally the only reason she hadn’t been taken out or killed in the first few seconds of the fight. With no direct magic working on her in her warlock form, her opponents were reduced to their current tactics. Speaking of which-

Luz’s eyes bugged out as she readied Stringbean. Anti-matter ball!

Clever little-! She couldn’t bat it away without annihilating herself and couldn’t cancel it out or direct it without getting blasted by pure energy! She’d have been toast if she hadn’t already been faced with this during one of many training spars.

STOP

Even if she couldn’t get rid of it with the words she could use, she could still freeze it in place with pure magic.

But now she had to actually take her opponent out before another attack could come at her.

Swallowing the sore throat away, Luz inhaled and bellowed

REVEAL

Far off into the distance, a silhouette lit up in her mind’s eye, with two more duking it out even further away.

Okay, that wasn’t too far away, and with the others way outta the way…

Luz grinned as she conjured glyphs in her off-hand, a rocky platform rising up from the sea under her, while gripping the butt of her staff with her main hand, and started sweeping Stringbean through the air, drawing as big a circle as she could.

As her feet danced around the platform in her swing, giant glyph circuits appeared around her, rapidly filling the stony surface.

The giant glyph combo was complete right as the circle connected to itself, an intense golden ring surrounding her.

With a slight of hand and a twirl, Luz gripped her staff tight with both hands at the middle, raising it up above her head, the circle lifting up along with it.

She breathed in, the circle and glyphs humming in anticipation, and slammed her staff down.

The moment it hit the central glyph, Luz shouted out

PETRIFY

The glyph, shout, and circle all merged and activated simultaneously, the golden ring absorbing the glyphs and shooting off at the speed of light with her roar.

Between blinks, the In-Between’s ocean was covered by a thick layer of stone, stretching from horizon to horizon.

Luz’s eyes focused in on where she’d seen the silhouette, her sight zooming in rapidly to find the figure had been caught up in the massively amplified spell, now made of solid stone…for now.

She nearly dropped Stringbean as she sighed in relief. Two down, two more to-

“Luz!”

Nevermind!

Urgency returned to her at Jamie’s panicked tone, and Luz flashed forward, snatched his hand, and conjured a glyph sphere around them while shouting

PAUSE

For everything outside the orange sphere, it was literally a time stop.

With the urgency temporarily put on pause—literally—she took the time to make sure Jamie was still all in one piece.

If just a year spent with them had shifted his appearance from eight to twelve years old, then now he looked closer to a teen. Without his unique coloring he could’ve fit right in at junior year in high school.

“I took out Preserver and Seeker,” she began, suppressing a growl at recalling the latter’s other alias, ‘the Huntsman.’ “Did you take care of Scribe?”

Jamie’s worried expression broke for a moment. “The puppeteer stickers work!” he announced with a prideful smile as he flashed his remaining stack. “I riled them up about all their insecurities and me standing up to them and they were too angry to react in time!”

Of course, the technique that used to terrorize the Isles for months all those years ago had no chance at working against one of the Archivists, but these ones, faintly glowing with embedded glyphs, had been designed to work with that immunity in mind. Well, they certainly had all hoped they would, especially after all the months slaving away at the project, with Jamie as the unfortunate test subject and her figuring out how to let others outside of herself use King’s dad’s glyphs while she was ‘warlocked.’ Three years almost hadn’t been enough time.

Right after coming out of the first successful test, Jamie had almost gone out to apologize to every Isles resident a second time, if not for everyone holding him down and convincing him it wasn’t needed.

“So that’s three outta four!” Luz found herself grinning. Preserver had been the easiest to take out. She’d been the only one to actually feel guilt for what happened with Jamie in the past, and strongly at that, though every time she tried to back down, she’d been ordered into rejoining the fight by Seeker until she’d finally been hit by one of the titan-enhanced stickers, which was also the entire reason Seeker had switched from short- to long-range attacks.

Yet despite their successes, her grin was no longer matched by Jamie. His prideful expression had instead returned to his prior panic.

“Archive, it knows!”

Luz paused, something freezing inside her. “Knows what?”

“It knows about King!”

Suddenly, the feeling of their prior successes disappeared like a hole had opened up under her.

While they had dismissed Jamie’s original idea, they had taken the concept of pretending events had taken place without a living titan involved and ran with it.

Eventually, their plan had been to hide King away in the Demon Realm after jumpstarting Luz’s warlock form, on his old island at that, not wanting to risk the Archivists going to Earth, along with everyone else they cared about. After that, it was just her and Jamie who awaited the arrival of the Archivists, on the other side of the world, near the Titan Graveyard, far away from them and the Boiling Isles.

Of course, the only hiccup they knew they had to account for was that, without a live titan around and her needing to be battle ready with her powers, Luz’s titan powers were clearly active and here to stay, compared to the original fib Jamie had thought up of them being temporary and gone forever. But in a way that was even better. When the Archivists arrived, their full focus had gone from finding a live titan to solely getting rid of her. The three that had approached them were in full belief that King didn’t exist. Rather than target someone who couldn’t yet fully defend themselves, they were instead going after her.

Then the most risky but most important part of their plan had gone off. Using Titan’s Blood gathered from the surrounding corpses and hidden in an artificial aquifer under the sea, combined with one of the few true spells Luz had learned to cast in Titanic, the two of them had taken the Archivists off-guard and transported them all into the In-Between, where they were disoriented, out of their element, and far away from any other living being, with zero risk at collateral. Sure, creating a portal through the In-Between to another universe was something they could do, but was getting out of the space between something they ever thought they had to deal with? Jamie hadn’t thought so.

It had also certainly helped that she and Jamie had done most of their training in the In-Between, quickly getting used to the way logic and physics played fast and loose in the space between universes.

But apparently, the last and most powerful Archivist, one which didn’t even identify as a living being, but as the thing the others served, had seen through their lie, with all the awful consequences and conclusions that came with it.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Luz asked the dreaded question. “We’re going with plan Beyond then?”

Jamie, looking as uncomfortable and certain as she felt, nodded quietly.

She clenched her fist, but nodded back at him, putting on a confident grin. If she didn’t stop the time pause soon, she’d be too exhausted to do what was needed.

With a final shared look, Luz dropped the glyph sphere and the spell beyond it, bracing herself for what was to come from the endless storm clouds above and raging seas beyond.

If she’d kept her eyes on Jamie for a bit longer, she’d have seen the resigned yet determined look on his face.

2194

For Izuku, the summer ever since first meeting Luz and telling her his name had improved dramatically. What had been only a single afternoon trying something out of sheer boredom and loneliness had instead evolved into a trip to the park almost every day for over a month.

At first, Izuku thought a chat with her once a while would be all he needed. A few times where he could help out someone who wanted a connection with someone else. But after just a few interactions that frequency became practically once a day.

Now, towards the tail-end of summer break, Izuku went out to his quiet spot in the park at the same time every day to draw—he was trying out painting now, actually, and feeling surprisingly good about it—and talk with his new friend.

The fact she was his mom’s age—or older, as she kept insisting—was barely even a hurdle for him. The majority of the time it just felt like he was talking to someone college-aged, the type who was used to being an older sibling and acted that way with every other young person they liked.

What helped most was that Luz was as fanatical about heroes and superpowers as he was, even if she’d admitted fantasy was her favorite genre, which, unlike superhero comics, hadn’t come to life in its entirety, not beyond specific quirks and themed heroes.

What had started out exactly like all his lonely, depressing summers had quickly become something Izuku wanted to call idyllic.

Though even the best of times couldn’t be perfect.

“And here I thought you couldn’t be lamer!”

Izuku winced as the easel was pushed over by one of his classmates, thankfully without the use of a quirk.

“Yeah,” Kacchan’s other lackey laughed out. “What kind of dork paints ?”

Kacchan scoffed, ignoring them in favor of glaring at him. Thankfully the presence of adults enjoying the afternoon on the other side of the lake and a hero patrolling the area stopped him from trying anything more than words. “Who cares what lame shit the nerd does in his free time? As long as he stops trying to be a hero.”

His glare intensified as he took a step forward, getting into Izuku’s space. “Got that?” he asked with a scowl. “I don’t want you making me look bad.”

Knowing nothing else would work, Izuku nodded with a jerk.

There was a beat of suspense, before Kacchan stepped aside and walked past him, shoulder-checking him into a stumble.

“Stay outta my way, Deku!” he shouted as Izuku frantically recovered his balance, the lackeys hurrying past him to stroll after Kacchan, laughing at what they thought was hilarious.

Izuku stood silently for a moment, watching his three year mates walk away, his heart still beating. Nothing had been destroyed this time, probably because Kacchan was ‘satisfied’ about his new interest outside heroics.

“Wow, what a jerk,” a voice only Izuku could hear rang through the quiet, forested section of lakeside, jumpscaring him. “He was the one to go out of his way to get in your way!”

He completely forgot she was here the moment Kacchan had shouted at him.

“And he wants to be a hero?” she grumbled, and Izuku watched her cross her arms.

“He…UA will help hammer out the kinks,” he offered up lamely, and Luz saw it.

“Kinks?” she asked incredulously. “Those are bends , buddy. UA better have heavy-duty machinery.”

Despite himself, Izuku found himself snorting, then laughing at the picture she painted. This was the first time he’d heard anyone talk about Kacchan like that.

If only he could muster the courage and skills to say any of those things and come out of it mostly unharmed.

“Kacchan’s the only one with a strong quirk,” Izuku finally explained once his laugh petered out. “And the determination to train it until mastery.” He sighed, staring forlornly in the direction he’d disappeared in. “He’s the only one I know who has a real chance of becoming a top pro.” And for someone who wanted that as dearly as him, despite his lacking, wasn’t that the closest he’d ever reasonably get?

“Hey, don’t put yourself down like that,” Luz said, changing tracks in an instant. “Just because you only have the power to see Peeping Toms like me doesn’t mean you can’t be a great hero.”

Despite the comforting tone, Izuku stilled as something dawned on him. Had he never…

“Uh…I don’t- uh…” He stumbled over his words. What was she going to think?

“Buddy?”

“I don’t have- uh, I don’t-” He curled in on himself, preparing for what would come next. “ I don’t have a quirk .”

He squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see the reaction unfold before him. Was she going to go the same way everyone else he met who later found out he lacked a quirk did?

“Oh!” Izuku’s eyes startled open at the loud noise. “So you seeing me is a quirkless thing?”

Contrary to any of his fears, Luz was looking off to something on her side of the connection, her hands on her chin. “ How’d I never think of that? Though I did always hide back then. Maybe I could test- No wait, I don’t even know any other quirkless people. ”

A part of Izuku’s dread-turned-confusion became quiet levity. Like himself, Luz apparently had a ‘too many thoughts’ problem, though for him that only happened when it came to heroes and quirks, and ended up spilling out as mutters, while for her it happened- well, with everything, and led to a bunch of distracted glances and jumping to barely related subjects every few sentences.

But there was one confusing thing that remained.

“You- You don’t think I’m-”

“I’m gonna stop you right there before I get any motivation to figure out how to crawl outta here and threaten everyone who called you the things you were about to call yourself,” Luz interrupted, her typically cheery tone eerily flat as the intense light behind her golden irises made their return.

He pulled his mouth shut, gulping quietly. There couldn’t have been a clearer answer to his question than that.

The unearthly glow disappeared as her eyes softened.

“Like I said, you don’t need a strong power to be a great hero, Izuku.”

To Izuku’s surprise, he couldn’t find it in himself to object to her sudden use of his first name, not when the shock of hearing the one thing he never had so casually all of a sudden was much greater.

In contrast to his shock, Luz frowned. “Okay, so you probably won’t be taking down kaiju or walking nuclear bombs in the future,” she conceded, in a tone that nearly made him laugh. “But I’ve seen a lot of villains and other bad guys in my life, and there are far more of ‘em out there that you can easily deal with if you know your combat, have tools like tasers and pepper spray with you, and trained your body and mind for it.”

Izuku quietly glanced at his noodle arm, knowing there wasn’t much to feel if he squeezed it, beyond some flab thanks to his katsudon overindulgence, but she wasn’t done just yet.

“But even more important than taking down criminals, the best heroes do all kinds of heroic things. Like helping out charities and reaching out to disenfranchised people, visiting terminally ill kids at hospitals, bringing awareness to issues that are easily overlooked, promoting inclusion, all that jazz. Helping and protecting everyone .”

Izuku found himself surprised, and a little embarrassed that none of those things had immediately come to mind whenever he thought of heroics, when Luz locked eyes with him, her own glowing with an unearthly light once more. “The ones that help and inspire everyone, those are the greatest heroes,” she finished, oozing with conviction. “And I know you’re gonna be one of them.”

“H-How- How do you know?” he stammered out, feeling his cheeks heat up. Nobody had ever said these things to him, nevermind with such confidence. Not even can or could or might, but ‘gonna.’ And she’d barely known him—pathetic lonely little quirkless Deku—for a month.

She grinned back at him. “Because you got the most important thing already.” She jabbed a finger at her chest, her eyes glinting. “The heart. That’s where the real magic comes from.”

His hand slowly drifted to hover over his heart. The urge to grab and squeeze his chest with it deepened as his eyes started to sting.

“I- I’m sorry,” he squeezed out when it didn’t stop, wiping at his eyes and feeling shame heat his cheeks.

“It’s alright, bud. Everyone needs to hear some good things once in a while,” Luz replied warmly. “Especially ones that are true.”

He nodded, unable to say anything else, and she let him, leaving behind a comforting silence.

Izuku was happy for it, as he was still processing the idea that anyone besides his mother could care enough to say these things. Though maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. Luz had become outraged she hadn’t been able to do anything for his twelfth birthday when she found out it had passed a few days after the fact.

“Y’know what? Past me was right.”

He blinked at the out of nowhere statement. “About what?”

She grinned. “I’m sick of lakes.”

Izuku quietly wondered if she was only saying it because Kacchan had found and ‘compromised’ this spot, but didn’t point it out.

Not that she’d have noticed, already having sunk into her own world of thoughts and ideas.

“Ooh!” she suddenly exclaimed. “What about we find a good spot for you to do some strength training? You’re about the right age to start the real heavy stuff without harming yourself, and the more time you have, the better!”

With the conversation they’d just left behind, Izuku was surprised to find he wasn’t actually against the idea. After all, if she thought he could become a hero, even if only a small-time one, then he had to make the best out of what he did have, right? And that meant his body.

And it was true, even Kacchan, who was probably the most dedicated to keeping himself healthy and at the top of his game for his future at UA, didn’t start doing any intensive training until after his birthday earlier in the year, and he just had his, so he hadn’t wasted too much time.

“You might want to get a trainer, but one of my old friends was all about this stuff. When she got married, she was the one to carry her husband through the door…with one hand, because she didn’t want to leave a footprint on the wood,” Luz said, grinning at him as she flexed her own arm, looking somewhat muscled but nothing overly visible. “I’m sure I got enough of that knowledge through osmosis to be qualified if you can’t find a gym or a professional in time.”

Izuku wasn’t entirely sure about that, but he could always look things up on his own time.

As Luz continued to happily chatter on about all kinds of related things she’d done herself, like endurance training and CQC, surprisingly, he found himself feeling something he thought he’d left behind at that doctor’s visit years ago.

Maybe…Maybe his dream could be more attainable than he’d resigned himself to believing.

Chapter Text

2031: Weeks Before Arrival

“Bye, guys! Don’t eat all the snacks I baked too quickly!”

Luz waved cheerfully as she watched the Abomination airships fly off for the one place they knew the Archivists couldn’t find.

Though her waving quickly lost its luster and enthusiasm as they disappeared into the distance.

“Gonna be weird to stay like this for a while,” Luz muttered as she picked at her furred arm. With the steam of the boiling sea brushing past her, her wings were especially twitchy.

“You could stay like that all the time,” the one person who remained, Jamie, said. “Not like you have a time limit. Why stop the fun?”

“You don’t have wings and horns that bump into everything, or fur.” It was like hair-care back when her hair used to be long—which it inexplicably became when she turned warlock, no matter how short it was in her regular shape—except worse.

And the other danger of having fur like this for longer periods of time was a dangerously clingy wife—yes, wife now! King and Jamie had been the best ring bearer-flower person duo ever—whose time in the workshop gave her the strongest koala grip out there. On the times she’d practiced holding her form for multiple days, she was in serious danger of missing her training sessions with Jamie, simply because her barely lucid wife had claimed her as her body pillow!

Jamie floated off the ground with a grin, similarly recalling all the embarrassing moments of the past few years.

Despite his adolescent appearance, the childlike enthusiasm and demeanor had never disappeared completely. A good thing, because who decided getting older meant turning sad and boring?

Sadly, Luz had to break the illusion of contentedness. “So, anything new on their ETA?”

Immediately, Jamie’s playful demeanor fell away. “Still between sometime this week and a month, I think.”

Luz instinctively glanced up at the sky, even though the stars were still obscured by the light of day. By now she knew the physical light wasn’t how Jamie could tell where they were. Really, she knew her physics. If something was traveling straight at you at light speed or even faster, you literally couldn’t know they were moving right for you until they crashed into you. Instead he got their position from the celestial magic they wielded, which they incidentally also were using to get here at faster than light speed. Apparently, if you had the sense for it, celestial magic had a much, much higher speed limit than light, and just the fact they were getting nearer meant that the general pressure of the magic around them was growing.

She sighed, knowing this was going to somehow be the worst part, not the actual confrontation. “Time to get going then.” No way were they going to have a confrontation anywhere near the Isles.

Jamie lit up next to her, taking out his star platform and growing it to fit the both of them.

Oh hell yeah. Wings and glyph spheres? Nah! This?

“Remind me to introduce you to Kirby while we wait,” she said with a face-splitting grin as she hopped on, folding her wings around her as they took off.

Luz hadn’t been to the other side of the world since they took care of the Trappers after Belos’s defeat, but now that she was forced to stay here for several weeks…

The Titan Graveyard…it was weirdly picturesque, despite knowing so many of King’s race had died violent deaths here, with the complete mismatch of skeleton parts not painting the prettiest of pictures. It also made for a great environment to do three-dimensional races in.

It was on one night, as tense yet paradoxically lulling as all the others, that she and Jamie were sitting on the snout of the largest skull, bones below and stars above, and Luz couldn’t hold the urge to pop the question.

“How’d all the titans here die?” she asked him, the cold wind, far away from the boiling sea, rustling her hair. Was it an attack? A cultural site where the elders of the race chose to go on?

Jamie’s contented expression faded, turning somewhat cagey.

“Like Alderaan.”

Luz blinked in confusion, before remembering they’d shown Star Wars to him during one of their many movie nights at the cottage.

“Giant death ray from space?” she had to ask, just to be sure.

She received a nod, and took in the graveyard beneath them with new eyes.

“So that’s why none are in one piece…and scattered all over the planet,” she mumbled, morbidly intrigued. At least King’s dad didn’t suffer that.

Though she couldn’t help but notice the glum mood overtaking Jamie.

“So it was pretty fast, at least,” she said.

Ugh, that was a terrible attempt at consoling, Luz!

Jamie pulled up his knees, eyes looking down at the pile of skeletons that nearly stretched all the way to the horizon. “It wasn’t for everything else.”

Luz paused, before grimacing. “Hey, bud, you don’t have to tell-”

“All the plant and animal life burned to ashes on the surface from a wall of flame. The land used to be green before it became all rock,” he continued, his voice monotone. “And the seas are still boiling, though they probably spelled it so all water away from titan bodies stays that way.”

“Jamie…”

“They just told me they were ‘cleaning up’ the place for my titan friends and that I could go back down to play after, and that I should go and find all the baby titans, because the adults were jealous I got to play so much with them and hid them from me.”

His expression soured even further.

“When I went back down, my only thought was ‘hm, toasty.’” He scoffed. “Good thing I didn’t get to do what they were hoping for.”

“It- uh…” Luz shifted uncomfortably. “Sounds like you have some bad thoughts trapped in there.” Thoughts he’d never even hinted at in his time with them.

He scoffed, glaring at what used to be a femur sticking out of the sea. “Yeah, so? Maybe I deserve them.” There was a beat, and then he let out a frustrated growl. “I can’t believe I was so stupid!”

Luz opened her mouth, but closed it again. Despite wanting to object, part of her wanted- maybe had to hear what had been plaguing him.

“Every time the Archivists said ‘we found a new world for you to play in!’ and I’d go down and do whatever I wanted, and the animals and people were always screaming and running away while I changed their world and puppeted them to take them back up, like they were the shiniest toys in a toy store to be collected.” His face twisted up. “That’s probably why they called me that, and I had no idea what I was doing!”

“Of course you didn’t,” Luz tried to say, but it was obvious she wouldn’t be heard.

“And then there was the whole Titan stuff!” he continued to rant. “They did the death laser and wall of fire stuff a few times before, you know? They even put it in the book for Preserver to read me for story time. That’s why the Draining Spell exists, because how else are you going to get enough energy? Belos was going to do that after the spell too, and I just gave him everything he needed! And I knew what it was used for! Cleaning the planet,” he spat out, before anger turned to a bone-sagging sadness.

“And when you freed me, just to stop what I started, I made you all flee, and I told Belos how to possess the Titan, so I made King’s dad disappear for good too, and you almost did too to save me! And I bet the Archivists knew I was free immediately because I just had to ‘play Owl House’ and turn the entire Isles into my toy box and use so much magic, and now they’re coming here again! And I just- I had no idea! I just didn’t care!”

Somehow, his body sagged even further as the last of his anger was spat out, and Luz couldn’t help but feel the same weight pressing down on him.

“Jamie, of course you didn’t,” she repeated, trying to steady her voice. “You were never told what was right and wrong. What was good and bad. What fear and death were. You just didn’t know any better.” She swallowed, placing a hand on his shoulder. “They never let you grow up. You never got the chance to.”

Luz winced when her hand was weakly batted away.

“So what? Still happened,” Jamie muttered, purposefully looking the other way.

There were some uncomfortable thoughts Luz had to push aside before she could speak again.

“…You know, as someone who was also an unwitting key player in an egomaniac’s genocidal designs,” she began slowly, watching him stiffen in realization. “Take it from me, blaming yourself for having been part of it will do nothing but hurt you and the ones you care about. The only ones who aren’t hurt by it, are the ones that are actually responsible.”

Jamie risked a glance back at her, and she gratefully returned what was almost a smile.

“And we’re getting the chance to kick them in the butt very soon,” she added, the almost-smile becoming a grin. “And I can also tell you, that is very therapeutic.”

“It is?”

Inner Luz jumped for joy at the tentative question.

“It sure was!” She laughed. “Man, pulling Belos off the Heart was literally the best thing ever. Like ripping off an itchy band-aid. He was all ‘YoU cAN’t dEfeAT mE.’ And I got to prove him wrong and shout the best catchphrase ever.”

“Eat this, sucka!” Jamie completed, devolving into a giggle.

Luz laughed with him, happy to have recovered his spirit. Though now that she thought about it, she hadn’t actually shot Belos with anything for him to ‘eat.’

“And you know what? This time’s gonna be even better,” she continued. “This time it’s gonna be like the epic, climactic end-game fight that takes up several volumes in the manga, or an entire cour of the anime!”

Jamie simply continued giggling. After all, after three years of living in the Noceda-Blight household, he was more than aware of all things manga and anime, even if he hadn’t taken a liking to it.

Though the improved mood didn’t last. Once the laughter petered out, Jamie’s face slowly fell.

“Do you…think we’ll win?” he asked quietly.

Luz startled. That was the first time he ever sounded anything less than certain about it.

Of course, she was feeling the jitters too, but the last thing she wanted to do was make his own doubts worse. Besides, they’d consulted all the oracle witches they could, and there was only a very tiny minority of futures where the Demon Realm was seriously affected or worse, even if there were never details on the exact outcomes of the confrontation. But that was enough to soothe her worries.

“I know we will. We have so many plans cooked up, we’ll pull this off one way or another,” she said, grinning at him. “Even in the worst case scenario where we can’t fight them off and they won’t stop, we can pull off plan ‘Stage Right’”—meaning ‘fake her death’—“And since they don’t know about King, they’ll leave the Demon Realm alone.” And by the time they might return or notice anything, King would be old enough to fight them off himself.

There were also a bunch of plans in case their main plan of taking them by surprise and teleporting them into the In-Between, away from their celestial canvas, didn’t work out.

“What if they do know about King?”

Luz inhaled sharply.

“We…did make a plan for that. Plan Beyond,” she admitted hesitantly. But despite her hesitation, she knew it was a terrible decision to keep him in the dark, especially now.

It was a plan made for the worst case scenario, exactly what Jamie had brought up. Because if the Archivists knew about King, either she lost and died, and they’d go for him next, or she managed to fight them off, but then they could simply flee and wait her out. After all, she still aged like a regular person, so she had another seven or eight decades in her at absolute best. And by then King still would be a century away from being able to repeat what his dad had done, or be able to defend himself against them. And she couldn’t turn someone else into a warlock either, not when her own power was all just borrowed from a dead patron. She had permission to borrow, not to share. Not that that permission could be changed now.

So them knowing King existed meant the only way he wouldn’t inevitably be hurt by them in the future, or worse, was if this confrontation was resolved more…permanently.

Jamie sent her a confused glance. “Then why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s not- It’s a hail Mary. A last ditch plan that might not even work,” she explained, feeling dread creep in at the next question.

“What is it?”

Luz swallowed, but told him.

After her explanation, the skull-top fell silent.

“You know, you don’t have to fight with me, Jamie,” Luz said softly, understanding his discomfort at the plan.

Jamie gave her a weird look. “Of course I do. I’m the reason they’re even coming here! I have to!”

Luz winced, only now understanding his insistence on helping as puzzle pieces fit together.

“It’s not about having to fight,” she began.

“But you have to fight,” he rebutted, though it sounded more like genuine confusion.

Luz nodded. “Yes, but that’s not-” She paused, breathing in a sigh as she got down on her knee, putting herself on his eye level. “Jamie, the last thing I—or any of us—want for you is for you to go into this confrontation thinking that you- that you have to make up for what happened before. Thinking that you have to make things right somehow.” She stopped, looking away. “Because trust me, I had those thoughts. And if I still had them when I confronted Belos I…I don’t think we would’ve won.”

And she truly meant that. Because what King’s dad had done to send her back with his powers had been such a deep, personal thing, that she didn’t think it would’ve worked if even the tiniest part of her had rejected it. And knowing she needed the power to save everyone wasn’t the same as fully accepting it for herself, wasn’t truly choosing it for herself, just for others’ sakes.

There was a brief moment where Jamie looked deeply confused, but his expression slowly fell as he began to understand.

“But…what do I fight for then?” he asked, a mix of confusion and resignation.

“Well, you’re in luck. There’s a lot of things to fight for,” she answered, flashing him an encouraging, understanding smile. “You fight for the people and places you care about. You fight for what you believe in. You fight to stick it to your awful relatives.” She grinned and put a hand on his shoulder. “And as long as you fight for what you think is right, even if doing that gets hard, then you’re gonna do just fine.”

Jamie’s eyes lingered on her hand before locking with hers, brimming with innocence.

“You’d be proud of me?”

Luz’s eyes widened in shock at the unexpected question. The way he said it. He almost sounded like-

“You were the one who came back to warn us, and stayed here and helped, and trained just as hard as I did for years,” she said warmly, pushing the thought away in favor of finding the right words. “You were the one who always put in the effort to change and learn from us. And even before all that, you were the one who listened to me and tried to save everyone when the Archive House was about to fall.” She couldn’t help but smile at herself as fondness filled her at the recollection.

“You’ve been making me proud for a long time, bud. Me and everyone else.”

Jamie’s eyes widened in disbelief, and then understanding came with a happy, pleased, “Oh.”

And Luz herself was feeling pretty pleased too. So many times it happened that she didn’t know what to say.

“But enough heavy stuff, or you’re gonna have to drop the pizza bagels for the rest of our stay here,” she threatened jokingly, receiving a playful glare in return.

An earlier part of their conversation had reminded her, actually.

She drew a small spell circle and summoned her backpack from wherever she’d stashed it.

“I almost forgot about this, but remember the manga we read last?” she asked, watching his eyes light up. “The same author recently started publishing a new series, so I brought the first two volumes to read together.”

“Is it good?” he asked, though his eyes were affixed to the backpack.

Luz laughed as she pulled the first volume out. “I dunno. Haven’t read it yet! But if the world building is as good as last time, it will be!”

She grinned. “Now, wanna get started tonight?” Not like either of them needed any sleep for a while.

He greedily snatched the first volume from her hands, eyes roaming the cover.

“‘Captain Hero?’”

“Definitely straight forward and in your face.” Luz giggled at his bemused expression. “But as long as the fantasy and world building stuff is as good as the last one, we’ll be in for a treat!”

Jamie nodded again, before pausing abruptly. “Wait a minute.”

“Hm?”

He sent her a suspicious look. “You’re doing that thing adults do when they’re trying to do…mature things.”

If distracting him from falling into a bad mood again was mature, then sure! But now that she thought about it-

“Well, maybe there’s something,” she said cryptically, partly because she was still thinking it up. “You see, no matter how our fight against the Archivists goes, there will still be a guy in Japan who’s drawing and posting a new chapter of this manga every week.”

“What’s that mean?”

She grinned at him as she pointed at the first volume he held. “That even if it feels like there’s a huge wall in the way right now, and you might get scared of what’s behind it, there are still things in the future to look forward to.” After all, the one person she knew for certain who would make it out of this fight with no physical harm was him.

Jamie pouted. “Amity’s supposed to be the one with the cryptic lessons.”

Well, that was true. She was much better with words. So Luz simply nodded, conceding the fact. She was just happy things had gone well this time. That she had known what to say.

“Now, wanna read?” she asked again.

This time there was no further interruption, and the two of them happily read the night away, up at the tip of the tallest skull on the other side of the world.

Though a nagging feeling stuck around in the back of Luz’s thoughts, as if she had forgotten to say something.

2194

As temperatures dropped and Fall set in, it became a daily ritual in the Midoriya apartment to hear frequent grunts coming from Izuku’s room, along with the occasional music.

And while someone like Midoriya Inko was a bit worried about her son doing something dangerous like intensive training without direct supervision, with only her as a source of intervention, the renewed vigor and sense of purpose he had slowly regained ever since the summer, along with a much stronger and healthier appetite, more than made up for it.

Of course, the grunts and occasional music weren’t the only sounds actually coming from his bedroom.

“Heck yeah! You got this, Izuku! Show those dumbbells who’s boss!”

If you’d asked the Izuku from before summer that he’d have a full work-out plan he was adhering to, along with a personal cheerleader, he’d have laughed at you—if he hadn’t had manners. But now…

With a final grunt he put the dumbbells back on the floor next to his desk, careful not to drop them.

“Man,” Luz said, spectating from his laptop’s screen. “By the time you get to middle school you’re gonna have to start fighting off girls if you keep this up.”

Now he actually understood the value of this, how nice it was to have someone cheering him on, supporting him so fully. Or at least having someone backing him up.

Even if said cheerleader said and did some weird things every so often. Like-

“Why would I have to fight girls?” he asked in confusion, feeling a little uncomfortable at the thought of needing to hit other kids his age.

She stared at him, before breaking out in a chuckle.

“Oh, right, you’re twelve,” she said, before grinning and cocking a brow. “Are you sure you don’t know?”

Izuku’s confusion lasted only another second before he understood, his cheeks heating up.

He looked away unconvincingly, ignoring the whispered ‘ay que lindo’ coming from his desk, which he didn’t know the meaning of, but was pretty sure he was supposed to feel embarrassed about.

Didn’t she have other things she could do instead of teasing him? Even with his earlier observations, Luz really did act like a much older sibling, one that was more than happy to take her shots once in a while.

He huffed and fell on his bed, immediately regretting it when he felt a bruise he’d gotten from school that day flare up.

“Anyway, if I had a way to smell through this, I’m sure I’d smell katsudon right now, so I’ll skedaddle for today,” Luz chimed from the laptop. Like this, Izuku could almost convince himself this was accomplished through a video call instead of a strange quirk.

Though her comment made him wonder.

“What…do you do when you’re not here?” he asked, before immediately adding, “Outside of watching celebrities.”

She was American, so her current time would be about- between four and six in the morning? He didn’t actually know on which side she lived.

“Well, I don’t really have anything else to do,” she answered, surprisingly evasively.

There was a moment of silence, and then Izuku realized something really weird.

“Wait, are you always around when it’s nighttime for you?” he asked, sitting back up bewilderdly. Because the usual time they agreed for her to show up on was at three in the afternoon, which would be between midnight or two in the morning for her.

How hadn’t he realized that before? And that she did this almost every day at that?

“What do you do when you’re not using your quirk?” he asked again, a sinking feeling hitting him. “Isn’t it always night over there?”

“Okay, so…” Luz had a shifty look in her eyes. “While I said I’m American, that doesn’t mean I’m looking through a mirror in a cozy cottage in rural Connecticut or something.”

And that would’ve been enough to sate Izuku’s curiosity, but by now his mind had started flashing back to their first conversation, when she’d originally mentioned her country of origin, and once more paired the well-hidden yet—to Izuku—clearly visible loneliness with her evasiveness, and began drawing depressing conclusions he had no answers to.

And the process of his thoughts must’ve shown on his face from where she could see him, because Luz squirmed almost imperceptibly.

“Okay, okay, fine,” she suddenly relented, much to Izuku’s surprise. “I can’t take you looking so sad at me. I’ll spill.”

There was a brief silence, one where Izuku debated objecting to the thought of accidentally guilt-tripping her, but after some tense fidgeting, Luz began talking.

“So, you remember how you figured out my power?” she asked, to which he nodded. “Well…that’s not actually true,” she admitted. “Actually, anyone who found themselves here could do what I’m doing.”

If she’d wanted to clear something up, it only made things far more confusing. “Here?” he echoed.

She nodded, though she looked to be having trouble trying to explain. “It’s- Well, imagine a plane of reality that’s just outside the real world, except you can look in from outside.”

Izuku’s eyes bugged out. “A plane of reality?!” he blurted out. Any answer or explanation he’d been expecting did not even come close to the real answer!

“Sounds crazy, right?” she half-joked. “But yeah, I was able to get here, and from here I can take a peek at anyone I know the name of. Not really a power of mine.”

Izuku nodded along, his mind racing too much for him to form words, until it made a terrible connection.

“And you can’t go back?” he guessed, fearing the answer.

Luz drooped. “Not anymore.”

He stared at her for a moment longer, before falling back on his bed with a dazed feeling.

While he’d gotten answers, big ones at that, they left behind even more questions. But apparently her real quirk was the ability to enter this outside plane, and it stopped working at some point, maybe even after the first time. He’d have to ask. Just the thought that other planes of reality existed was enough to make him go dizzy. What did the place even look like? How hard was it to live there? Was the brother she kept mentioning stuck there too?

Though out of all his questions, only one felt the most pressing.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked quietly, not meaning to sound accusatory.

“Never came up,” she answered. “And it’s not a light topic to talk about.” She seemed to pause for a moment. “Kind of like how you don’t bring up the bullying at school.”

Izuku startled hard enough he got back on his feet again, wincing again as his bruise acted up.

“How do you-” he began to demand fearfully, his mind racing as his stomach sank. “Did- Have you watched me in school?” he asked, hurt and indignation flaring up. He trusted her when she’d said she wouldn’t check up on him outside of times they agreed on, so her breaking that promise-

“No.” Luz’s answer stopped the flare-up in its tracks. “You’d have noticed me if I had. But more importantly…” She sighed. “You hide everything well, if you’re worried about that. But when you know what the signs are, when you’ve experienced several yourself, they’re not hard to spot. I clocked it pretty early on, before summer break ended.”

And suddenly the heat was doused, like a cold splash of water.

Izuku slowly sat back down, letting silence take the wheel for a while.

“Did- Did you get hurt?” he asked quietly, just about leaving out the ‘too.’

“I was lucky it never got physical.” The source of Luz’s voice changed from the laptop to his phone sitting next to him. His eyes flitted over to find a morose gaze. “But the other stuff wasn’t much easier.”

Izuku nodded quietly at her, though he wasn’t sure she was looking.

“For the longest time I tried to pretend none of it was getting to me—I even convinced myself…but it did,” she continued. “It sucks, when it feels like the entire world is against you, just because you’re weird or out of the norm, for something that feels out of your control. When you’re surrounded by people but you’re stuck by yourself. When it’s like there’s no point in trying to change anything so you’ll just have to smile and tough it out, because the only way to make it stop is by turning into someone you’re not. When it feels like there’s no one truly in your corner. When the only thing you ever really wanted was to have someone on your side, to actually feel understood for once.”

His hand gripped his bed sheet, growing tighter with every statement that hit too close to home to not be from shared experience.

And out of them all, the final one, cast in the past tense unlike the others, hit the hardest, filling him with a strange sense of desperate longing.

Why couldn’t they just understand?

Why didn’t Kacchan understand he just wanted to be a hero to save people and make them feel joy, and not as a petty attempt at mockery? Why didn’t the adults understand his dream was more than a pitiable childhood fantasy he’d grow out of? Why did the rare, well-intentioned teachers who recommended him alternate future prospects not understand he’d always yearn for what he’d miss out on? Why didn’t his classmates understand that this was more than him being stubborn or delusional, that he knew just as well as they did that it seemed nigh on impossible?

And why didn’t his mom understand he never wanted to be like All Might because he was the strongest and most popular, but because he wanted to save and inspire with a smile? Why didn’t she understand he didn’t need a quirk to do that? That all he needed was someone to tell him he wasn’t trying to do the impossible? That he at least had a chance?

And how hadn’t he realized until now that he wanted that as badly as he wanted to be a hero?

“Buddy?”

Luz’s concerned voice shocked him out of his thoughts, and he only then realized the stinging in his eyes and the hot wetness on his cheeks.

But most importantly, he had someone who understood now, didn’t he? He’d known for sure ever since their last talk at the lake.

Rather than answer, at risk of a sob escaping him, Izuku tried to wipe away the tears.

“Hey, I’m sorry for upsetting you,” Luz said softly as he continued to wipe. “I hate being the reason for bringing down the mood. ‘s why I don’t like talking about upsetting things from my past, especially if they aren’t relevant.”

“It- It’s alright,” he got out, sniffing quietly. “Any more big things you’re leaving out?” he half-joked.

“Yes.”

Izuku startled at the honest answer.

“But if you want to know, I’ll tell you. There’s much crazier stuff out there to tell,” she continued, giving him a weary smile. “I don’t want you to feel like you can’t trust me, but it’s a lot.”

“No, no,” he interrupted, taking his phone from the bed. “I- I trust you. You don’t have to tell me.”

And he really meant it. If there was anyone he thought he could trust, it was someone who shared thoughts he never shared with others or even knew about himself.

Luz stared up at him from his phone, before smiling reassuringly. “Well, you can ask anytime you want. I’m sorry for not bringing things up earlier. I didn’t want you to feel obligated to talk to me, so I tried to not let it show. But I guess we’re talking pretty often now anyway.” She grinned at him. “Though I get the feeling you saw right through me from the start.”

Izuku blushed, sheepishly admitting it with a smile. “I was just. That first time, at the lake- You were-” He averted his eyes, scratching the back of his head. “You just looked like you needed help.”

When he glanced back at her, his embarrassment was disrupted by a wide, beaming smile.

“See? I don’t know what everyone else is thinking. You becoming a hero is basically inevitable.”

He nodded, too abashed, yet also too delighted to say anything but smile, until his mom’s call for dinner made the two of them say goodbye for the day.

When Midoriya Inko served her son his portion of katsudon, she realized with elation he’d never looked more cheerful.

2031

“You’re never laying your eyes on a titan again!”

Luz kept herself crouched low, waves of the Demon Realm sea crashing over her, as Jamie launched attack after immense attack at their final opponent.

Going up against the Archive was the most terrifying thing she would ever experience in her life, even the dread of facing the other Archivists seemed on the same level as remembering an upcoming test last-minute in comparison.

For starters, its figure simply loomed over them from above, barely moving at all against the onslaught of attacks. And its robes seemed to spread and fan out eternally, blocking the entirety of the Human Realm sea up above the moment it faded into existence, replacing the sea with a starry sky.

It was also easy to see how Jamie knew what Archive thought, as its inhuman thoughts literally filled the In-Between.

When it’d first appeared, the moment after the time stop spell ended, Luz had suddenly felt pressed down by an all-encompassing sensation of ‘knowing’ and ‘interest.’

Maybe the most terrifying of all was that, despite Archive broadcasting with no restraint, Luz hadn’t felt any real emotion from it. Just thoughts and concepts.

“Is that why you’re not taking the others and just leaving me behind again? Because now that I’m not a little baby I’m actually interesting?!” Jamie continued, incensed.

An even more terrifying sensation of ‘affirmation’ and ‘ownership’ crawled down Luz’s spine, forcing a full-body shudder as she kept herself small behind this small holdout of rock. For now, Jamie’s words and attacks had almost fully taken its attention off of her, a barely experienced non-Titan with Titan powers who’d pass on within a century anyway.

In the distance, Jamie scowled up at Archive, before blurring into celestial blue.

Luz’s eyes shot up when a rip briefly appeared in the Archive’s sky-spanning cloak, a single star now missing from it.

At the same time, Jamie reappeared in a flurry of magic, holding the displaced star, which looked more like a ball shining a brilliant white up close.

Her attention went back up to the endless starry sky above. If every star was actually…

Maybe there was a good reason the leader of the Archivists called itself the Archive.

“Hey, isn’t this that living planet we archived way back when?” Jamie asked playfully, tossing the ball into the air as the air pulsed with something unknowable. “Yeah! One of a kind!”

His playful smirk, one that fit perfectly on a teenager, turned into a rebellious scowl as his hand gripped tightly around the orb. “Well, if you like destroying what I care about, maybe I’ll start doing the same!”

Luz was nearly shocked into unconsciousness when the In-Between tremored and groaned under the onslaught of all-encompassing ‘unbridled rage,’ the first glimpse of anything remotely human from the entity above.

The fake night sky had disappeared in an instant, leaving only a large, impossibly lanky robed figure, trembling at the atomic level. The only thing visibly under the void contained in its hood were two eye-blindingly blue stars.

“Now!”

Luz startled at Jamie’s empowered shout, but immediately understood when Archive blurred and shot right at him.

With all attention off her, she stepped away from the rock she’d been hiding behind, inhaling until her lungs were burning and full, readying the only other true Titan spell she’d trained to mastery.

As the two celestial beings crashed into each other, new canyons and crevices bursting into existence all around the In-Between, Luz began to speak in Titanic, an orchestra of existing, non-existing and impossible instruments swelling through the fabric of the realm outside realms.

While the giant portal spell had been unknown to the both of them, being sourced from the knowledge held in the preserved skull at the pole, this one Jamie had first-hand experience with.

Reality around the clashing beings turned an ominous dark, and Jamie pushed himself away. The two puppeted Archivists and Seeker’s petrified body—though it was already littered with cracks, and the stickers on the others were peeling at the edges—appeared beside Archive in that moment.

A beat later, Luz felt Archive’s full focus shift entirely to her for the first time that fight. It was nearly enough to cause her to falter and begin babbling insanity, but the swelling notes of the almost eldritch-like language echoing through the canyonous space couldn’t be stopped.

The instant before Archive could lash out, the darkened reality turned opaque, forming a perfect sphere, on which more glyphs and shapes and braces formed.

In any other scenario Luz would’ve found the uncanny resemblance with the Beast Ball hilarious.

Their newly sprung trap was instantly pushed to its limits, quaking wildly as its prisoner began to escape, but sparkling bands of Celestial Blue appeared and wrapped tightly around it, covering it in sparks of Manic Pink.

Luz shot a grateful look in Jamie’s direction, though halted when she saw he was straining as much as she was to keep things contained, his knuckles white from gripping onto the bands emerging from his palms.

“Almost done!” she shouted, briefly glancing at the sea below her. No, too dangerous to try here with the time they had. “Take ‘er up!” she yelled, pointing at the sea on the Human Realm side of the In-Between.

He gave her a strained nod, before he and the prison ball shot up, the latter being pulled up by the bands Jamie was holding onto.

At the same time, Luz readied Stringbean again, drawing a circle above her as she inhaled for what she hoped was the final time.

PART

The shout blasted through the spell circle, concentrating and shooting up to impact the torrential sea high up above.

Water began rushing away from the impact, whirling and roaring in anger as a vortex formed in its place, piercing deeper and deeper into the depths.

As quickly as it had started, the vortex formation came to a standstill, a strange, bright light filtering through the remaining thin layer of liquid separating the In-Between from…the fabric of the Human Realm? Even with the sight muddled by liquid, Luz could almost make out the shifting kaleidoscope of impossibly bright fractal crystal behind it, like the pink, living tissue hiding behind layers of dead skin.

The crux of plan Beyond had rested on Luz’s one and only encounter with the spirit of King’s dad, and his last moments sinking into the In-Between before he passed on.

It was all based on a simple question. If an ageless god-like being could pass on from sinking into the In-Between’s sea, then couldn’t an equally ageless though seemingly unkillable group of beings be forced to pass on as well? Like forcefully ending a rogue task that wasn’t terminating on a computer.

Luz held up her hand and held onto the shrunken remains of the spell circle, instantly feeling the strain hit as she began stabilizing the vortex, holding back the tons of liquid swirling around it.

Jamie and the prison ball containing the four Archivists came back into view from her periphery, rising into the vortex of air.

It was…almost…done!

With her arm trembling like crazy from the strain, Luz shouted. “Jamie! Get out!”

It was time to see if their last-ditch hail Mary was actually going to work. Because if it didn’t…that wasn’t something she wanted to think about yet.

But Luz’s manic grin froze when she realized something was off.

Jamie wasn’t moving away.

“Jamie!” she shouted again. “Come on!”

And still he remained unmoved, his back remaining the only thing she could see of him.

“When you told me the plan, I knew it wasn’t going to work.”

Luz stiffened. The lack of emotion in his amplified voice…

“Because Archive will escape and take the others with it if it’s not restrained the entire time. It’s too powerful. The only reason it didn’t take out the Titans all by itself was because it barely cared.”

In the distance, Jamie’s head turned to the side, and with his eyes in view, Luz could see the onslaught of emotions hiding just under the surface.

“I didn’t say anything, because I knew you’d never do this…if you understood someone would have to stay behind.”

He turned fully, a rueful smile marring his face as his hands continued to strain against the restraining bands. “But someone has to make sure they don’t slip away, right?”

All Luz could do was stare up in horror, her feet rooted to the churning sea below.

“No…Jamie. Jamie! Don’t you dare! ” she shouted, her voice turning into a roar. “Don’t you dare do this! We can- We can…” She faltered. Try something else? Try what? This was the last-ditch hail Mary.

“I have to,” he returned, the smile falling into sorrow. “I promise. I’m not doing this to- to- I want to do this, to protect the people I care about. I don’t want you dying for this. And King-” His lips twitched down. “I’ve lived for so much longer than I was trapped here, when the first stars just lit up. I’ve seen and done every amazing thing there is, even if some parts were- were awful, and it’s only these last three years that let me appreciate it all.”

He sniffled, the heart-breaking noise somehow carrying through the gap between the Human and Demon Realms. “But as long as the Archivists are here, King will never get to live a life like that. His kids won’t ever get to exist. The Titans will never get to exist again with them around. So if this is what it takes to save him and you, I’ll be more than happy to do it.”

Luz’s lip wobbled as it began to set in there would be no changing his mind. And it was only then that she realized what she’d forgotten to say up on that tallest skull.

She should’ve told him to fight for himself too.

“But you only just got the chance to grow up…” she tried to argue, a halfhearted attempt at convincing him as her heart continued to break. He still just looked like a teenager, not even college-aged. And they still had that manga to keep up with. And-

“But this won’t be the end, right?” Jamie returned, quietly staring as he floated there, as if he wasn’t straining to keep the prison intact for every additional second. “King’s dad moved on. Maybe I’ll get to go where all the other titans went. Or maybe somewhere else. I’ll get to play and see all kinds of new things on the other side.”

“You shouldn’t have to be the one choosing this,” Luz said, regret staining her words. If they’d brought him in on the plan they could’ve figured out something else. They could’ve brought other people, even if all but the two of them were hopelessly outclassed. They could’ve- They-

Finally, her thoughts ran out of steam, and all she was left with was the sobering truth.

With hindsight available, it almost seemed like this outcome was inevitable. And the fact Jamie was willing to do this…

Even though she didn’t want him to go through with this, the last thing she wanted was for these final moments to be filled with only hurt and regret.

“Can we at least have a proper Noceda goodbye?” she asked weakly, unsure if he could even move out of the vortex.

For the first time since plan Beyond had become their only way forward, Jamie smiled at her, the light of the kaleidoscopic crystal filtering in from behind shifting softly.

The next moment, the shadow his figure cast on the sea below shivered and rose up, revealing a visage she’d last seen in a memory over a decade ago. Though any of the dread from back then was long gone.

Despite one of her arms continuing to tremble under the strain from keeping the vortex from collapsing, Luz shot forward, wrapping her arm around the surprisingly solid shadow projection.

“You take good care on the other side, Jamie. And don’t forget to have fun,” she whispered as she squeezed with titanic strength, unsure if he could hear it.

“Pinkie promise, no fibs,” he returned shakily, causing her to sob out a laugh.

“I know I already said it,” she said, slowly, reluctantly backing out of the long-distance embrace. “But I couldn’t be more proud of you.” Despite how much she hated it, she couldn’t lie about that.

“Thank you, for making these last years the best of them all,” the shadowy projection said, his voice unable to hide how shaky it was.

“Goodbye, Jamie,” Luz squeezed out through the lump in her throat, one that only grew as the shade faded away, and she was only left with his real body floating up high.

They briefly met eyes, and through only sheer desperation was she able to break up the lump. And as she wrenched her straining arm away, dropping all resistance, she shouted out what she knew she still had to say.

“I love you, bud!”

Seeing the walls of the vortex collapse, taken over by the sea hungrily reclaiming its stolen domain, Luz pulled her stinging eyes away, not wanting to bear witness to what she was causing.

_{“I love you too, mom.”}

She jerked back up, and got to glimpse one last, beaming yet regretful smile before the vortex was swallowed up entirely, leaving only vague, blurring silhouettes under its surface.

Luz stared up, uncomprehending of Jamie’s last words.

But before she could process, an inhuman screech that sounded incompatible with existence shook the In-Between, and Luz could only just about see the fading silhouettes be replaced by blinding light, a wave of Celestial Blue spreading through the Human Realm sea at blistering speeds-

-before the In-Between exploded around her.

_“Luz!”

Feeling returned to her in the form of aches and dirt.

_“Mija!”

Eyes shot open, greeted by a sea of stars framed by green canopies.

Luz groaned as she tried to sit up, figures rushing for her as she cried out in pain.

“Luz, Luz!” Amity’s voice came first, her hand grabbing hers and stopping her from hitting her head on the ground. Already the gray fur and bony digits were receding into tanned skin, her hold on the power disrupted. “You just appeared in the sky and slammed down like a shooting star!”

She looked around, spotting the green vegetation of King’s old island and the crater of bare dirt centered on her.

“Mija, are you alright?” her mom shouted worriedly, rushing in right behind Amity.

“I- I’ll be fine,” Luz croaked out, watching everyone else gathering at the crater’s edge, some precariously trudging down as others used their staffs.

“Alright, give it to us straight, kid,” Eda’s voice piped up from above as she descended, wings disappearing with her harpy form, with King following right behind her, his own wings fully grown in and healthy. “Will we be expecting unwanted guests on our doorstep?”

Luz stared at the forming crowd, briefly uncomprehending, before the full weight of the battle hit.

“No, no,” she tried to answer, keeping back the sobs she felt threatening to climb out. “The Archivists are gone for good. They- They’re dead. We won.”

They were all dead.

Silence reigned over the fresh crater, before those standing at the edges burst into jubilant cheers.

Luz could not find it in herself to match them. And as the others got lost in the imminent celebrations, only those with her at the crater sensed the unspoken, with only King and Amity beginning to understand.

“Luz?” King asked, his voice tinged with the same dread and fear present in Amity’s eyes. “Where’s Jamie?”

The others jolted, and Luz found herself unable to answer or continue meeting their gazes, her eyes drifting down to a spot beyond her feet, where the pouch she’d been storing the enhanced puppeteer stickers had come off during the impact, spilling its contents on the dirt.

The stickers had lots their otherworldly luster. Now nothing more than mundane, dirtied paper.

It was all the confirmation she needed.

The others got their answer as the first hot tears spilled down her face, and Luz Noceda broke down weeping, surrounded by all but one of her closest friends and family.

Chapter Text

It had been nine months. Nine months since the impossible battle against the Archivists, since the terrible victory they had won.

Life had been busy. Things had changed.

There’d been a funeral, an empty grave in the clearing near the Noceda-Blight cottage, covered in blue and pink flowers.

Most of the Isles had no idea what had happened, what had been avoided, so festivities had been kept small.

The biggest change of all was the destruction of the portal door. It still remained as the front door of the Owl House, a striking feature, but its previously bright colors and functionality had dulled and disappeared when its creator had passed on.

And no matter how hard they tried, in the months that followed, they were unable to create another door.

Not even when they tried the old way, even using one of the eyes of the preserved titan head from the pole, which had been a vital ingredient they’d missed in their previous attempts. There wasn’t even a sizzle or an implosion.

It was like the connection between the Demon and Human Realm had been broken, or blocked, or severed. Maybe permanently.

With the last thing Luz could remember, the In-Between might barely be holding itself together.

Secretly, she couldn’t help but feel a selfish relief that everyone she cared about had been on this side of the divide, one she always regretted the moment she thought of it, remembering the burgeoning life Vee and Masha were forced to leave behind back on Earth.

At least her mom had retired a bit early, and had nothing important back in Gravesfield…nothing but dad’s grave. She’d instead taken up a position in Home Economics at Hexside—the Boiling Isles equivalent of it, at least.

Despite the need no longer being there, Luz and King had continued going to and fro from the preserved skull, trying to learn Titanic and, now that time permitted, Titan culture together.

Amity had slowly settled down, no longer going out on expeditions and becoming solely a financial backer, leaving only her times experimenting in the Abomination workshop. Really, she could’ve stopped after finding the already mentioned preserved skull at eighteen years old and entered the history books, but that just went on to show how ambitious her sweet potato was.

Eda and Lilith continued on strong with their respective head positions, the others kept doing what they loved, Vee and Masha found a nice apartment in Bonesborough, with its ground floor repurposed as an occult trinket and joke shop—guess whose idea that was—and Hooty was Hooty.

As for Luz? For the past nine months, she’d been plagued by a dream.

No, not nightmares, surprisingly. Not dreams too. Just one dream. A strange one.

Every single night, ever since finding herself back in the Demon Realm and one family member short, she dreamed about floating, her vision filled with nothing but misty kaleidoscopes of color. The few times she’d tried, the calmth radiating from her surroundings was soothing enough she gave up and let herself float away in a trance.

And every morning she’d wake up feeling fully rested, with only that same impression fading in her mind. Every time, she wondered if she was missing something, but the dream was quickly pushed to the back of her mind as the regular stresses and hi-jinx of real life took over.

It stayed that way, unfailingly consistent, and Luz would’ve lamented the fact she couldn’t experience any other dream anymore if not for the equal inability to have nightmares, leaving an overall positive impact on her sleep schedule.

Until one day something changed.

Almost exactly nine months since they’d started, Luz went to bed and once more found herself in her dream space.

Except this time there was a strange pull, coming somewhere deep within the fog. It almost seemed to call to her, filling her with a strange urgency.

It was enough to overcome the calming effect of her surroundings, and she slowly, sluggishly, reached out with her arm, only now realizing she could.

Luz frowned when her arm came into view, with bony digits and gray fur hiding her skin.

Why was she in warlock form? She only did that nowadays so she could speak Titanic when learning with King. She’d gotten infamous enough around the Isles in this form anyway from the training days.

She stretched out her arm as far as she could, wondering if titan powers would work in strange dreams, and flexed her palm.

Much to her surprise, a glyph sphere manifested around her, driving the mist away.

Suddenly, she didn’t find herself feeling sluggish anymore, an awareness that was normally reserved for the waking world flooding into her.

Examining her surroundings more carefully, Luz ordered the glyph sphere to lower itself, for lack of a better direction. As it did as commanded, she was met with the surprise of her life when she suddenly flew out of the fog, being met with the unmistakable sight of-

The In-Between?!

Luz let the glyph sphere pop, gently falling down until she met the pool at the bottom, and took in her surroundings.

Yes, it looked exactly like the In-Between had in the times she’d visited it outside of the battle, except not.

The entire landscape was marred with scars. The tall cliff walls of oily green, sometimes inviting yellow depending on the mood, had plenty more canyons splitting off the main strait. There were even chunks floating in the air. And parts of the walls of rock just didn’t exist altogether, leaving behind only an intimidating void, like a rip into absolute nothing.

Looking up, Luz found the mists were actually an entire layer, covering the entire In-Between and separating the Human and Demon sides like a deck of clouds. From down below, its colors were dominated by celestial blue and sparks of manic pink, a signature she could recognize anywhere. Though there were also blobs of voidish red, cursed yellow, envious green, and rotting gray.

Ah, that could be why the connection was blocked.

Luz pushed aside the thought of where the dense celestial fog had come from and put her mind on the dark, rippling cubes floating around her.

“Amity Noceda-Blight,” she called out, a cube unerringly presenting itself from the pool.

Her curiosity pushing her forward, Luz took the cube and watched its surface turn transparent.

And there she was, sleeping in bed.

The both of them.

Luz had never had any out of body experiences before, but she could now confidently say it was extremely weird to see herself back in the Demon Realm, sleeping too, as the rise and fall of her own chest indicated. Thank Titan she hadn’t died in her sleep.

The cube sank back down as Luz sat down dazedly. So…she’d been, what, astral projecting into the In-Between every time she fell asleep?

In that case, this had to be a consequence of being caught up in that blast, right? Of course there’d been more consequences.

Truthfully, when they’d originally come up with plan Beyond, they’d all known there’d most likely be impossible to anticipate consequences of killing unkillable beings in the space surrounding all realms. But with its status as a last resort, there hadn’t really been an argument for discarding the plan because of it.

Curiosity once more took over, and Luz stood back up, launching upwards with a flap of her wings.

A simple but nostalgic ‘weh!’ cleared a hole in the blanket of dense celestial magic, and Luz quickly found herself switching gravity, orienting herself to land on the other pool with a graceful step.

Once more she eyed the floating cubes. Since the battle, the situation on Earth had become unknowable to them, just a planet-sized black box.

What had happened over there in the past nine months?

The moment Luz opened her mouth, she realized she was faced with a pretty big obstacle.

Nobody she knew was on Earth.

Uh…

Oh, celebrities! Doi!

Which one to pick first though?

2033

Luz shook her head as she came out of her trance. That first night liked to come back to the forefront whenever she appeared in the fog dividing the In-Between, lulling her into a soothing trance.

Most nights, when she wasn’t up for it, she let it, but occasionally she let the mysterious pull guide her into flying out, returning to the Human Realm side to do her business. While the former gave her a good night’s rest, the latter, while her body felt fully energized, did not, if only because being aware and focused for longer than twenty-four hours was a different kind of exhausting.

Even after a year of occasional wandering, she still felt no closer to finding the pull’s origin.

But that didn’t mean her active nights weren’t well spent. Since that first lucid night in the In-Between, she’d slowly been getting the handle on peeking into a realm she had no access to anymore.

And wow it was difficult. The only entry points were famous people she knew the full names of, or any other full names that she happened to overhear while watching someone she already knew of.

Any of the things King’s dad had been capable of during their one meeting, showing a person he technically hadn’t known the name of, replaying past points in time and switching between different surfaces from the same cube, seemed impossible to her.

Maybe it took a million years to get that kind of mastery.

But over the years, a sort of web of useful names she could use to peek into different areas of the world was spun, and Luz thanked the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon for being a real thing almost every week for making it work.

On the plus side, it really helped train her memory!

By now she had a decent network set up, including celebrities, obviously, but also heads of state, members of cabinets, news anchors and famous reporters, and other surprisingly important people, like regular online Joe’s who kept up with global news religiously; a collection most spy agencies would drool at. And with it she’d become the primary provider of Human Realm news for the Isles.

Because yes, obviously she’d told everyone about her new nightly escapades.

And she may or may not also be occasionally checking in on people back on the Isles to make sure they were following their sleep schedules, Hunter .

Man, popping up in a nearby surface and scaring the bejeebus outta the night owls with a simple ‘hello!’ was the best.

But funny distractions aside, ever since last week, news from the Human Realm had suddenly become very interesting.

Though Luz had definitely hesitated in telling the others. It just sounded so…hoax-y?

Really, a baby that glowed like a glow stick? Sounded like a high-production publicity stunt for some weird product the people behind the hoax would unveil soon.

Though her attention would be pulled away from the Human Realm soon enough by something far more unbelievable.

As Luz wandered through another canyon of the In-Between, she’d be forgiven to second-guess her eyes when she noticed someone moving around in the distance.

With eyes bugging out and all thoughts thrown aside, Luz flashed over, crossing the distance.

Not just a human. A little kid?!

In a hurry, she ran the last of the distance up to what looked like just a toddler, with a buzz-cut and a pudgy build that showed he lived a good life.

“Kid?” she asked worriedly. “Hey, look, don’t panic, but-”

She cut herself off when she got no response.

His eyes hadn’t even flitted to her, the furry, horned, void-eyed, over seven foot tall woman with wings.

With a frown, Luz moved her clawed hand and waved in front of the kid’s eyes.

Nope, nothing. Not even-

She startled when the kid laughed soundlessly at something invisible and toddled off, phasing right through her.

Luz whirled around. What the heck?!

What was she seeing?! Was this some kind of projection? A reverse reflection from the Human Realm?

With how damaged the In-Between was, even after two years, very likely.

Was this kid at risk of somehow falling into this place?

Rushing after the strange reflection, Luz finally noticed something stitched into the hem of the toddler’s pants. ‘Jerry Winston.’

Realizing the windfall she’d just been given, Luz shouted out the name and hurriedly snatched the answering cube from the air, peering through it.

The ripples gave way to the view of a quaint little home’s backyard.

And among them was an exact replica of the boy from the In-Between, giggling as he made his parents chase after him in circles around the backyard. Even his movement matched perfectly.

Luz frowned, only more confused than before. Besides the obvious, it didn’t seem like anything weird was happening with the kid.

But it was as he toddled directly for the white-picket fence surrounding the backyard that something in her periphery caught her eye.

The legs of the reflected boy toddling through the In-Between had started shimmering, glowing a barely visible blue, a glow that suddenly ramped up and-

Luz gasped when, in the Viewing Cube, the boy made to jump over the fence, something that was doomed to fail, and then shot up into the air, easily jumping thrice his height like a bona fide Jedi.

As the boy and the parents screamed in shock and surprise, Luz dropped the cube in shock, stepping back with a daze.

Several days later, Luz managed to peek into a top secret meeting between the president and their advisors, being briefed on magical powers manifesting across the nation and the rest of the world, in kids ranging from newborn babies, including a whole cluster of fifty in India two weeks before the glowing baby, to a smattering of those just starting puberty, who’d all been completely ordinary just a year ago, and she dimly realized the hoax was, for once, not a hoax.

Okay…so maybe five near-omnipotent magic space gods exploding deep inside a realm’s foundations had a slightly bigger impact on said realm than they’d thought.

Whoops.

2195

It was a cold late winter afternoon that had Izuku typing away on his laptop, a cup of hot cocoa and a notebook to keep him company.

Several tabs on his browser held notifications of people discussing ongoing hero school entrance exams, though information of UA’s always managed to stay under wraps.

Another month and he’d be going to middle school. Just three more and the entrance exams he’d been dreaming of and dreading would be at his doorstep.

But something else had been plaguing his thoughts for a while, always on his mind whenever he was alone and behind his computer.

Who was Luz?

He knew she said he could just ask, but a big part of him had the feeling that question would dredge up heavy topics. She’d even said so herself, if not in those words. So if he could figure it out on his own, then there’d be no need for her to talk about those things again. He definitely didn’t want his curiosity to harm someone else.

But even then, until recently he had way too little information to try anything.

What he knew was her first name and nationality, and from one or two comments he was sure she’d lived in a small town in Connecticut. But recently he’d overheard something new.

With entrance exam season approaching for the first time since he’d met her, Izuku may or may not have begged her to peek in on UA’s exams, something his past self, less tempted by the possibility thanks to temporal distance, had already anticipated, having told her to not give into his future begging.

His current self hadn’t appreciated that, and had made liberal use of puppy dog eyes and other highly effective tactics he’d put together from analyzing Luz’s personality.

She hadn’t caved in, in the end, but the most important part for now was when Izuku had nearly managed it. She had murmured, “ Dangit, Luz, you’re a Noceda. You do not yield, ” under her breath to hype herself up.

So here he sat, fighting and losing the temptation to see if search engines would give him his answers.

He didn’t think a straightforward search with the terms ‘Luz Noceda small town Connecticut missing’ was going to give him any results, or would show him too many people with the same name instead, and was prepared to do more in-depth searching.

So it was to his great surprise that a link to an archived news article showed up as the lone result.

He quelled his burgeoning excitement. It was most likely not related. But the speed at which he clicked the link betrayed him.

Immediately his eyes shot to the headline, ‘Noceda Family Reported Missing.’

Izuku straightened in his seat. That sounded exactly like- Was this it?

His eyes quickly strayed down and scanned the first paragraph.

‘Early this morning, the Noceda family has been reported missing by concerned neighbors of the small town of Gravesfield, Connecticut after a month of continued absence. The Noceda household consists of Camila Noceda, her two daughters Viola ‘Vee’ and Luz Noceda, and their respective partners.’

He hastily scrolled down the page, a family picture coming into view.

Izuku stared at his screen, wide-eyed, before sagging in his chair, which rolled back.

Yeah, that was her.

Was it that easy?

But more importantly, it didn’t feel like any of his questions had been answered, meaning he’d have to ask her anyway.

Izuku sighed, but scrolled back up before closing out of it and giving up, something nagging at him.

And it was as he reread the title, his eyes slowly drifting down to the text below, that he finally caught notice of the article’s publication date.

His chair was kicked back as he shot out of it.

June 2031?!

That was two years before the glowing baby!

Izuku’s eyes darted across the screen, incredulity flooding his system. It was a miracle this page had even survived the chaos, collapse, and loss of information from the Dawn of Quirks. He would know. His lack of a quirk had roused a strong interest in the pre-quirk era, and the last decades before the first quirks had come, after the internet had been established, had suffered the most from information loss.

This was impossible.

And yet.

~“I’m a lot older than I look, y’know.”

“There’s much crazier stuff out there to tell.”~

How could this- How was this-

“Heyo!”

A high-pitched shriek escaped him as he fell back onto his bed.

From her projection on the laptop screen, Luz sent him a confused, yet somewhat smug look.

“You know, you’re actually the second quirkless person I jumpscared today. I bet I-Island locked down all Cybersecurity though,” she murmured, before perking up. “Oh, right! The theory’s correct! Other quirkless people can see and hear me! Probably a good thing we never tried in retirement homes.”

“That- That’s great,” Izuku stammered, clutching his chest. Just yesterday he had finally found a quirkless person of his generation that was lucky and famous enough that their name was somewhat easily found on the internet, though he’d never have expected All Might’s old support engineer to have a quirkless daughter. Clearly she’d gone to test it out the moment it was day over there.

Luz beamed at him, before finally noticing his frazzled state.

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked softly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Izuku swallowed at the should-be joke, words nearly failing him.

But his discovery made it more than clear this was bigger than he’d first thought. Bigger than some heavy topics from her past. And so he knew there was no other way to find out.

“…Are you?” he asked hesitantly.

She blinked at him, her confusion only growing.

In response, Izuku fished his phone from his pocket, turning it and showing her the dark screen.

Luz cocked her head, but disappeared from his laptop a moment later, the article no longer obscured. A second later he heard a gasp coming from his phone.

“Oh.”

“That- That’s you then?” he asked, turning the phone to face him again.

Her eyes were dull and serious as she responded with a damming, “Yes.”

And as soon as the moment came, it passed.

“Why didn’t you ask?”

Izuku winced at the hurt tone in her voice. “I- uh- I didn’t want you getting upset from recounting things for me,” he said meekly.

Immediately, Luz’s expression softened up, her lips tugging into a fond smile. “You’re adorably considerate, but I can handle my fair share of doom and gloom, okay?”

His cheeks heated up, feeling like he was several years younger in that moment, and he knew he had to nod.

What followed was an awkward silence, one that Luz immediately broke up.

“So, I bet you have a lot of questions-” she began, but that had been enough to break the dam.

“How are you still ali-around?!” he shouted, his mom thankfully not around to hear it. “And how did you get in that outside realm if you don’t have a quirk at all? How do you have power? Who’s your brother and where is he? Why can only quirkless people see you? What was the Dawn like? What were the lost decades like? Why-”

His questions were broken up when his ears registered loud laughing.

“Wow, that was a very safe bet. Shoulda put money on that,” Luz laughed, wiping a tear away. “How about I ask you a question first, bud.” Her eyes glinted with excitement. “Do you have two or three hours?”

Izuku nodded rapidly, his curls bouncing with him, and with another laugh Luz launched into her story.

“So…you stumbled on another realm filled with magic users and demons, made a bunch of friends and family, one of which was the secret son of the land’s deity, a-and the land, then fought and dethroned a genocidal puritan witch hunter from the seventeenth century and freed a celestial deity along the way?”

“I’m surprised you still remember enough to summarize; that was, like, over an hour ago!”

Izuku lowered his head from the praise. He just had his notebook open to write in, because he was sure he’d be overwhelmed if he’d spent any time thinking about any part of it in greater detail.

Luz grinned at him. “Anyway, don’t forget me finding the spirit of my little brother’s dad in the In-Between after dying, and becoming his warlock to take care of the genocidal goop monster for good.”

“…you came back from the dead,” Izuku finally processed. “And there really is an afterlife?” He was raised to believe so, but to know about it was- it was something else entirely.

“Wherever it is the In-Between goes,” she answered simply. “And since it’s the space between every realm, where everything goes. I wouldn’t know, I kinda got stuck halfway there.”

And that was something for him to become existential over when alone in bed. But more importantly, “And then you had to fight a group of celestial deities aiming to kill your brother in the In-Between…”

“And their essence spread over the Earth after getting killed, resulting in the first quirks manifesting in any person with an adaptable enough body,” Luz finished, before giving him a curious look. “So how’s it feel, knowing where it all really came from?”

How’d it feel? It felt like his entire worldview had just been upended, dropping his brain in the nearest dumpster and leaving him behind.

There were so many theories out there. From a rat-borne virus to human experiments gone wrong to natural evolution with proto-quirks that predated the first quirks by generations, too mundane to be noticed, to some ancient magic resurfacing, to alien interference and even divine intervention, because pre-quirk humanity had been so close to screwing over the planet irreparably.

To be one of the very few to know that, in reality, quirks had been a complete accident, borne from a woman killing genocidal gods at the border of their reality and their remains spilling over…

Izuku broke out in a manic, slightly broken giggle at the sheer ridiculousness.

Which kept up for over a minute.

“Nobody’s going to believe me,” he finally whispered dazedly, feeling the urge to get back to laughing and not having to think about it.

Luz nodded in commiseration, before perking up. “Oh, one more cool thing! People’s quirks actually wander around in this place, mimicking what their owner is doing. I’ve coined the name Quirkatars.”

“…what?”

“It’s a portmanteau for quirk avatars. Kinda wanna make it catch on but I don’t really…” She trailed off, looking sheepish. “You’re still trying to cope with the space magic juice stuff, are you?”

“I- uh, y-yes,” he stuttered, mind failing to keep up. “I-I’m also just- You’re a hundred and eighty-nine years old. That’s- All the things you must’ve seen and- uh, why do you not look-”

Izuku cut himself off before he could say something incredibly rude, but Luz had already heard, and laughed.

“Like a saggy sack of flesh?” she asked with a smirk. “Been there, done that, bud. Never again. But if you want to know. In this place I can look however I want, as long as it’s still me.”

Before he could try to understand the meaning of her words, Luz’s projection flickered on his phone, and the next he was face to face with an incredibly wrinkly woman with wispy gray hair.

And then she flickered into a prepubescent girl his age with a tooth gap, a bush of curly hair draping over her shoulders, before returning to looking his mom’s age.

“But if you want to know what’s the closest to what I really look like…”

Her image flickered again, and this time Izuku startled when he was met with black sclera. Not just that, but also the fangs, the large, lyre-shaped horns jutting from her head, the membrane-like skeletal wings just visible behind her, the dark-gray fur covering everything under her clothing below her neck, the longer, thicker, purple-hued hair, the pointed ears.

“Is- Is that what you look like when-”

“Yup,” Luz interrupted, smiling brightly. “Nowadays I bet I could blend right in with all the heteromorphs out there, even if it’s a bit intimidating.” Interestingly, she didn’t return to her original appearance, and her golden irises, which surprisingly looked so much less intimidating or uncanny with the black sclera, looked at him. “But anyway, it’s probably getting late over there. Anymore burning questions before I leave you to process and probably fill several pages?”

Izuku fidgeted as he tried to wade through the growing amount of questions flooding in.

“Are there- uhm, still things you kept out?” he finally asked, wondering if that was even possible when they’d been talking for so long it was nearly dinner time.

“There are some relevant bits,” Luz admitted, fidgeting with a lock of her hair. “But they’re very personal, or…telling you feels like it’d be dumping some kind of, I dunno, responsibility on you? One that might get you involved in some very dangerous stuff in the future. And I don’t think I’d be able to convince you to keep yourself out of it.”

The sudden seriousness sobered Izuku up.

“Are there important things people should know?” What did she know that made her sound the most serious she’d sounded in all the time he’d known her?

Luz looked away, before admitting, “Yes…but now that I know I can communicate with quirkless people— which might be because growing up with all this celestial magic without having any makes you more sensitive to the titan kind, now that I think about it —I can take my time and find someone who’s best equipped to handle passing that stuff on to important people. No offense, Izuku.”

He shook his head, not denying it. He understood a twelve-year-old who wasn’t even in middle school wouldn’t be able to do much of anything.

“Just a shame you can’t pass on your powers too,” Izuku mused half-jokingly, his mind happy to grasp any topic to analyze. “Like what happened with you.”

Luz huffed out a laugh. “Heh, if only. That would change almost every…”

She trailed off, the mirth leaving her eyes.

Izuku fidgeted on his bed. “Uh, Luz?”

Her golden irises flicked to him, though she remained eerily quiet and in thought.

“Are you-”

“Izuku!” his mom’s voice called. “Dinner’s ready!”

He suppressed an internal groan and shouted, “Coming!”

The moment his eyes returned to his phone screen, Luz had disappeared, leaving him with only his growing questions and lingering confusion.

2037

The past four years had not been good for Luz Noceda.

Still wandering the human side of the In-Between, guided by a pull that seemed impossible to locate, her peeks and news gathering from Earth painted a bleak picture, one that didn’t seem to be improving over time.

Societal upheaval was the most optimistic way of describing it. The more realistic ways…

There were nights where visiting the In-Between was out of the question, where she instead lay awake, thinking about that one day six years ago.

Such an innocuous decision, made under pressure, where there had been little time or focus to spare, where everything had been at stake.

What would’ve happened if they’d performed plan Beyond on the Demon Realm side?

Nothing at all? Witches born with celestial magic or some weird half-breed? Witches born with no magic at all? Mutated feral super-demons? The Archivists possessing Titan corpses?

She had no idea, but one thing she was sure about was that the residents of the Isles would be taking the changes far better than Earth was.

If this had been way back when, Luz wasn’t sure she could’ve taken the feelings of guilt and self-loathing piling up whenever she saw another tragedy unfold on Earth. Another government risking full collapse.

Thankfully, she had so many people around her, and she knew better than to keep things quiet. The one thing she truly prayed for was that things on Earth would get better. At least, hoping that super-powered humans, also called meta-humans and mutants on the news, became a large minority and then majority before things were irreparably broken.

With how saturated the Human Realm pool of the In-Between still was with celestial magic, she, Amity and Lilith had estimated the increase in super-powered births would be practically exponential with each generation, a small light of hope she could hold onto whenever she looked into the Human Realm again.

The increase was definitely obvious, even now. In the past four years, encounters with reflections—or what Luz was tentatively portmanteauing as ‘Metatars,’ from Meta Avatars, even if she wasn’t really feeling the term herself—became more and more common. Right now, despite the density still being sparse, she could always spot two or three reflections wandering the realm while she flew overhead, unaware of their surroundings, rather than none or only one.

She doubted their location in the In-Between was a one-to-one mapping with Earth though. Several times she’d seen reflections be close enough they’d be in viewing distance in real life, and their powers were extremely obvious through their appearance, but never had she seen any interact and ‘talk’ with each other, even if they’d only been a dozen feet apart.

It was during her mid-flight musings, however, that something astonishing happened.

The ever-present pull calling out to her suddenly changed direction.

Luz’s wings flapped frantically as she came to a stop, eyes scanning the direction the pull was now coming from.

Not too far from her, a reflection was wandering the In-Between. Even from this distance, ignoring the call, something felt off about it.

She hastily flashed over to its location, her mind cleared of all other thoughts and her heart beating on her eardrums.

There, on the ground, the reflection was actually confronting another, one she hadn’t even noticed in her hurry to catch up.

That was…new.

Stark white, short hair was what caught her attention immediately. A hint of uneasiness caught up with her as she landed on the water, the kid’s back facing her.

But that was stupid, why would anyone suddenly be able to see her in here?

Slowly creeping up on them from the side, the other reflection finally came into view, a fearful expression on their face as they were held up by the throat.

Luz’s uneasiness spiked as strands of blue suddenly arose from the other reflection, seeping back into the white-haired boy, who couldn’t be older than five despite their height.

And then, the other reflection collapsed completely, a phantom overlay blurring and drifting over to the boy like mist, overlapping briefly before being sucked in, leaving him a shade brighter than before.

Oh Titan! What the actual-

The boy turned his head to the side, as if alerted by someone in the distance, and Luz got a full look of his eyes.

No reflection. Supernatural, piercing red. Inhuman.

Luz’s axis tilted as the In-Between fell away.

Archive.

It was back.

It’d slipped away. Just like Jamie had warned.

So in despair was she, she almost missed when Archive’s reflection rose up in the air, invisible blue swirls carrying it up, and shot off.

Cursing to herself for freaking out, Luz shot off and chased after it.

It was as she gave chase that rational thought regained a foothold in her mind and began fighting off the terror.

If Archive still had its powers, its memories, it wouldn’t be walking around Earth, doing–what had it even done just now? Absorbed the other reflection? Taken- no, collected their power?

It all made sense now. Obviously an Archivist, possibly reborn as a human or not, would register with her. She was probably sensing the pressure of celestial magic or something slowly increasing as she got closer to a singularity, or an echo of it. She had no idea. She’d have to ask Amity, and tell everyone!

Once more, Luz nearly missed it when the human Archive’s flight trajectory changed once more, descending back to the pool below.

There, due to the presence it was exuding, Luz nearly missed the other, much less potent pressure coming from nearby. But when she saw…

A few feet away, reading something she couldn’t see—because other than clothing and often-worn accessories like glasses and headbands she couldn’t see what reflections interacted with—sat a much smaller boy, with equally white, but messy straight hair. Though their weak, diminutive stature was a stark difference to Archive’s.

Clearly they were in the same space on Earth, because the other looked up and met eyes with Archive.

Luz’s breath hitched. Besides their fading smile—clearly they weren’t overjoyed with the arrival—those eyes glinted with humanity and empathy and a certain mischievous playful stubbornness, a special combination she could never forget, despite the color being a vivid green now.

“Jamie,” she breathed, prior terror all but forgotten.

A breathy laugh escaped her as Archive was greeted with narrowed eyes and a lukewarm nod.

Someone had to stay and make sure they didn’t slip away, right?

And make sure he had.

The In-Between quietly echoed with sob-like laughs for the rest of the night, choked up with relief and gratitude, feelings that wouldn’t fade for hours after she finally woke.

It looked like Jamie got a chance to grow up after all.

Chapter Text

2104

Luz blinked as the soothing visage of the In-Between nebula enveloped her, easing her pains and aches.

If there was one thing these nightly trips were a Titan-sent for, it was not having to feel nearly a century old.

Outside of the In-Between, she hadn’t even been in her warlock form in over two decades. Not since she nearly had a heart attack from King jumpstarting her power. But here, being in this form was like its own kind of comfort. She definitely preferred it over what was currently sleeping back in the Demon Realm, cuddled up with her wife.

Though she could turn her appearance into anything she’d looked like at some point if she put some effort into willing it to change, she stuck with this when she wasn’t peeking into the Human Realm. Besides, traversing the In-Between with her wings was the quickest and most fun way of travel.

With a lazy flick of said wings she sunk out of the fog layer, which had thinned by a few feet over the years, and cast a glance in the direction of the ever-present pull.

Technically there were two pulls, had been for the majority of her life, but only one was any comfort to her.

Since first discovering Archive and Jamie’s reincarnations—though she preferred rebirths, since it didn’t seem like reincarnation was really a thing normally seen in the Human Realm—her nights in the In-Between had become her wandering after Jamie’s reflection when she wasn’t using her usual web of names.

Despite how much she’d tried back then, she couldn’t figure out what his new name was, and neither had she gotten one for Archive, who she’d only heard fearful whispers of under the alias All For One in the Human Realm.

And while she’d loved to have claimed she was good enough at Japanese that she could lip read names from the soundless reflections, she wasn’t. And that just left her watching the manifestation of Jamie’s power, wondering what was happening to him in the real world, and what his power even was.

Sometimes, Luz wondered how much of their previous lives had carried over into their human lives. All For One certainly reminded her uncomfortably of the entity he’d been before, even if even he wasn’t fully immune to the influence of being human.

For Jamie, Luz was saddened to see his early life had been a warped mirror of his old one, growing up with an older sibling as controlling and inhuman as All For One.

But not entirely. It was clear the time Jamie had spent with them on the Isles had carried over as well. Luz was sure anyone without those experiences, buried under layers of a previous life or not, would never have been able to do anything but meekly go along with their older sibling’s whims and cruelty, pleading at most.

But not Jamie. He’d remained steadfast in the face of his older brother.

Several times, when All For One had been still young and confronting—and no doubt killing—other powered people, collecting new powers, Jamie had snuck out after him and intervened.

Of course, as any loving older brother would, he tried to elbow him out of the way by the chest, but Jamie had grabbed it before it could connect, and despite his frail, permanently malnourished body, remained steady, showing no give as he glared up at him.

Luz wasn’t sure if those frequent moments had made All For One despise him more, or had only made him more obsessed.

Meanwhile, she had been trying to rebuild her web of names in those early years. Most of the ones she had before, celebrities, politicians, heads of state, they were all useless when it came to powered people. Such was the disconnect between regular and powered humans.

Eventually, from spying on politicians, to chiefs of police, to policemen, to a random powered thug, to a powered good Samaritan who got recruited into a growing resistance against All For One, to higher links in their chain of command, Luz slowly leapfrogged into new, more useful viewing points into the Human Realm, Japan specifically.

And wasn’t it just a hoot that Jamie had been reborn as a Japanese person, after their shared passion for manga and anime?

It was right as she suffered the most annoying blockade, the leader and his second in command never calling each other anything but…well, Leader and Second around other people, even the other commanders, that everything changed.

Just barely a year earlier she’d bared witness to a reflection being forced onto Jamie—though reflection wasn’t a good term when it had become separated from its real world counterpart, more like a lingering vestige, especially with what she knew All For One usually did to the original in the real world.

And now, for the first time ever, Luz had watched as Jamie and All For One’s reflections became separated in the In-Between, at a distance great enough that the two ever-present pulls could be distinguished between from afar.

From what she’d figured out over the years. Real-world distance meant very little in the In-Between when it came to reflections. ‘Social’ proximity had a much stronger influence. Families with multiple powered people always stuck nearby, even when separated in the real world, and the same went for best friends, brothers in arms, lovers, and so on.

Actual distance had some influence, or else the seven degrees of separation ensured all of humanity’s reflections would’ve been far less spread out, but seeing the sudden distance between the two brothers, fated to clash, after a day spent awake in the Demon Realm had been a shock.

What had been even more shocking had been when she’d looked in on the resistance’s war meeting following said event, where the leader had mentioned ‘rescuing an unexpected asset from All For One,’ and one of the commanders had accidentally bumped into a recuperating Jamie on the way out.

That had been the first time Luz had seen him physically in the Human Realm.

But things weren’t meant to last, because that would also be the last time she’d see him like that.

Just two months later, in which Jamie had been hidden away with wherever the resistance’s leader and second in command were, what Luz considered the third worst day in her life occurred.

It was with an almost somber acceptance that she’d watched All For One’s reflection approach Jamie once more in the In-Between, he and the two resistance leaders fleeing along with other resistance members.

And then…

The sight of his reflection being torn to pieces in a single blast would stick with her forever.

But before she could’ve sunk into despair, consoled only by the fact Jamie got to grow up properly, well into his thirties this time, she bore witness to something astounding.

The torn apart body had only remained for barely a second before the reflection—more his soul now—reappeared, whole and hearty, and more solid than any reflection or vestige could be.

Luz had expected him to sink into the pool below, like she’d seen happen when All For One had killed other powered people without taking their power, or even considered grabbing onto him and doing what King’s dad had done with her for one final conversation, but then…

Rather than sink, Jamie’s soul turned translucent and ghostly again, and was swiftly pulled toward the fallen figure of the rebellion’s leader, where the soul briefly remained overlaid before sinking in, remaining whole through the entire process.

Luz gawked, unintentionally alongside All For One, as the two resistance leaders escaped, fading into the distance in the In-Between, yet carrying the pull she’d associated with Jamie along with them.

Was that his power?

What followed would span the many decades that made up Luz’s life.

It hadn’t even taken four years before All For One had tracked down the resistance, and Luz had bared witness to the power being transferred again, just a brief glimpse of a ghostly Jamie drifting from Leader to Second before settling again.

Just a few days later and most of the resistance, including Leader, was massacred, all their reflections either sinking into the pool below as souls or being absorbed by All For One, except Leader’s, who repeated what Jamie’s soul had done.

And it was only then that Luz regained a sliver of luck.

Because, through some insane cosmic coincidence, while watching a research group in a Chinese university experiment with the genetics of meta-abilities, she stumbled on a graduates wall, with one picture bearing perfect resemblance to a younger Second.

Or, as the nameplate she only barely managed to glimpse revealed, Bruce Lee.

Setting aside whether his parents had named him like that on purpose or not, Luz finally got the chance to see what was happening with Jamie and his power in the real world.

What had followed was nearly a decade of the most dangerous cat and mouse game, where Bruce practically performed a one-man version of guerrilla warfare, with little to no allies.

In recent years, however, things had calmed down.

At some point, Bruce stumbled on a hermit who’d isolated himself at a very young age due to his meta-ability, presumed dead by the world, called Shinomori Hikage, and left One For All—a name she finally got to know—with him to safeguard and cultivate.

Over the next three years her focus was split between the monotonous life of Shinomori and the wild goose chase Bruce set up to lure All For One away from Japan, until finally it ended, his soul too disappearing to wherever Jamie’s and Leader’s had gone.

And with it went the last person she could’ve learned Jamie’s new name from.

The last twelve years since had been boring on the One For All side indeed, with her only window into it a hermit who did nothing but train and survive in a small shed far away from civilization.

On the Earth as a whole, however… The term quirk had been born, and over in her old home country the very first heroes were legitimized by the government as a real profession, a model that was quickly spreading across the world. Outside of Japan, things were slowly looking up.

With a sigh, Luz let all those memories drift away, staring up at the shifting colors of the celestial nebula above.

Even after all these decades, the sight still mesmerized her. It was like the aurora on Earth, but amped up to twenty.

It was a sight she wished everyone could see, at least once. And most had.

By now, everyone but King, Hooty, and her wife had peacefully gone under over the last few decades, one after the other.

Eda had passed as one of the first, pulling off a prank that gave her sister a heart attack.

Well, that’s what she asked everyone on her deathbed to tell anyone who asked. Her final days had been surprisingly non-bombastic, which she saw as far more of a tragedy than her fake story.

That Lilith had gone into seclusion for the last few months of her life, equally affected by the curse, and staged her death to successfully sell the ruse was the most disturbingly heartwarming thing Luz had ever seen.

The fact she got to pull up every single one of them and talk to them one last time if it was during the night had been a small blessing to her. She got to share this with them in a final goodbye.

Luz quietly stared up, taking in the ebb and flow of the different colors.

“Batata?”

Oh…

A somber feeling washed over her as she looked to her side, taking in the person whose hand she’d started holding.

“Hey, Sweet Potato,” she said fondly, taking in her wife—who’d aged the most beautifully, in her opinion.

Amity’s golden, misted over eyes took in her current appearance, her warlock form from her forties. A moment later, her appearance flickered and shifted to one in her forties too, leaving the wrinkles and failing sight behind.

Her eyes shifted to their surroundings, filling with awe and wonder.

“The In-Between?” she asked as her eyes roamed up.

Luz’s grip on Amity’s hand tightened. “Yeah.”

“It’s beautiful,” she gasped, her eyes affixed to the nebula above.

Luz simply stared, forgetting everything else for a moment as she took in the beautiful sight.

Except she knew the serenity wouldn’t last.

“Time’s up then.”

Luz shut her eyes, feeling something deep within her snap softly at Amity’s observation.

“It is.”

“Hey,” her lovely voice spoke up, and Luz opened her eyes to look at her wife’s loving gaze. “You’ll still have King…and Hooty. And it won’t take much longer.”

Luz snorted, smiling back. “You know you can’t be sure when it’s me we’re talking about.” The same person who’d escaped into another realm to escape reality, which turned out to have been in a time loop she’d helped cause on accident. The person who’d decided to let a celestial kid room with her and unwittingly became their mother figure, only to fail them in the end. The person who’d killed godlike entities to protect her brother and accidentally made superpowers a reality on Earth.

“Well, if something does happen. I’m sure you’ll overcome it anyway,” Amity rebutted, grinning confidently. “What was it you said? A Noceda doesn’t yield?”

Knowing she’d been beaten on the verbal arena, Luz shook her head with a chuckle, before asking, “Wanna see how the Human Realm’s doing? Hearing about it is very different from seeing.”

Amity laughed, eyes glinting. “One last date?”

Luz smiled and snaked her arms around her, taking off with a mighty flap of the wings.

It was many, many hours later that the duo eventually returned to the waters of the Demon Realm, smoothly gliding down.

Luz landed gently and stared down at the additional weight strapped to her chest.

“Ames…” she said, prodding her wife’s cheek. Amity’s response was to nuzzle her furry chest, lips quirking up.

“Why your palisman turned out to be Ghost instead of a koala, I’ll never know,” Luz teased.

Amity groaned. “Let me enjoy my youthful strength and stamina for a bit longer.”

Luz laughed at her mutter, cocking a knowing brow.

“I thought you got to enjoy more than enough of that already tonight,” she teased with a squeeze of Amity’s behind, watching her cheeks tinge a light pink before letting herself drop out of the hold with a sigh.

Luz’s arm shifted from Amity’s back to holding her hand once more, making sure to not let go.

Amity’s eyes shifted down to the tight grip, her smile thinning.

“You know that won’t keep working. I’ve been feeling myself get heavier since I got here,” she said quietly.

Luz’s own smile tightened.

“You sure you won’t let me try and make you a fresh warlock body with my awesome powers?”

Amity shook her head. “You told me that won’t work,” she said, rubbing the fur on the back of Luz’s hand with her thumb.

And it was true. Despite her proficiency and long tenure with the warlock form and titan power, she just knew she couldn’t achieve that. Throughout her long life, despite making the power as much her own as she could, to the point she felt more comfortable in her warlock form in the In-Between than her human appearance, there was always a barrier in the way.

After all, this power was just something she was borrowing, even if she couldn’t return it. It wasn’t hers to give out. She wasn’t a titan, just a mortal human who got to choose more.

Luz breathed in, swallowing the lump in her throat. “I guess this is goodbye then.”

“I’ll only settle for ‘see you’,” Amity said haughtily, cracking a smile out of her.

Two pairs of gold eyes stared each other down, before the two of them embraced tightly.

“ Te amo, Amity ,” Luz whispered, knowing her voice would crack otherwise.

“ Yo tambien te amo, Luz .”

After an unknown amount of time, they separated. Amity gave her a wistful look as she stepped back, Luz letting her arm stretch out to hold on for a moment longer.

Amity’s eyes flicked down at the trailing hand, a silent plea behind the surface, and Luz nodded reluctantly.

She let go, and watched quietly as Amity sank and disappeared into the pool below with the promised, “see you,” and a contented smile.

“See you too…”

Something felt different.

Luz didn’t know how long she’d stood in place, grieving all those she’d lost. But in previous times it had eventually been cut short by her waking up in the morning.

Breaking the mournful silence, she called out, “King Clawthorne,” knowing Hooty wouldn’t be much help.

The nearest cube rippled, revealing a view of treetops moving past, the rising sun cresting them.

Luz smiled. Despite having ditched the medallion after turning thirteen, King had gone right back to wearing something similar once her nightly situations became known, just so she could always call him with him noticing.

“King?” she asked, watching the bobbing treetops go still as he stopped walking.

Yeah, he’d kept growing taller as he got older. At ninety-two years old, he was as tall as giraffes were, just without the long neck, and with plenty left to go.

“Luz?” King’s rumbling baritone, far from the originally adorable squeaks and voice cracks, came through as the reflective medallion was lifted up and turned around.

“Hey, hermanito ,” she said, a bittersweet smile pulling on her lips. “I- uh, could you-”

“Luz?” King interrupted. “Where are you?”

She frowned as he began looking around the medallion.

“Uh…in the medallion? You were looking right at me?” she said in bewilderment, something close to dread creeping in on the edges.

King’s yellow and purple eyes returned to the medallion, though it was obvious now they were pointed somewhere at her forehead instead of her eyes. “I can’t see you.”

“Oh. Uh- Nevermind that.” Luz pushed the feeling aside. “So, I called because…Amity passed on, and I’m not waking up. Could you go to the cottage and…”

King gave her a worried, empathetic look. He’d gone through all the same losses she had. “I’ll go check,” he said and let the medallion hang again, giving her a treetop view of this portion of the Isles.

“Thanks, lil’ bro,” she returned. “I know you don’t like being around the Isles much these days.”

By the time he’d grown tall enough to easily tower over every demon and powerful enough to outshine all other magic users, it had become inevitable someone would see the resemblance with their island and put the other pieces together, especially with all the information Amity and Lilith had cataloged and, after scrutinous editing, published to the Isles available.

Since it had become public knowledge, King found much difficulty trying to stick around the Isles, either confronted by religious nuts, fanboys and girls, inexplicable haters, and just in general people with too many expectations and judgments.

Ever since he’d laid his clutch just a few years ago, he’d decided on sticking to the old Hatchery island, making his permanent home there. Hooty was there too, probably curling protectively around the still incubating eggs, which could take up to a century even with an adult around, according to the preserved titan’s mindscape. After Eda and then Lilith had passed on, he’d gotten more ‘Hooty’ than ever—which, for King’s sake, hopefully was just a mourning phase.

Finally, the cottage she’d built her life in came into view, and King breathed in sharply to steel himself.

Luz cringed at the subsequent sound of bones creaking and groaning, cracking and grinding together as he shrunk down to a cottage-friendly size.

“Thanks again for doing this for me, lil’ bro,” she said, knowing how much shrinking down was an ordeal for him.

“I’m getting a food haul from the Bonesborough market today anyway,” King brushed off, entering the quiet cottage.

He walked through the lived-in hallway and entered the study, which had been converted to the master bedroom once stairs got too difficult to ascend.

Luz saw herself in the bed, cuddled up. She didn’t have to look at either chest or wait for King to check for pulses to know the truth.

“Can’t get more romantic than this, huh?” she half-joked in a daze as King confirmed anyway. “Both in our sleep on the same night.”

“Luz, please.”

She shut her mouth at the tired admonishment, leaving the room quiet for King to mourn.

And all she was left with were her own thoughts. What did this even mean for her, going forward? The most obvious thought was one she didn’t want to think about for another while.

It wasn’t until King had made some calls and was leaving the cottage again, gathering up a tragically inert Ghost and Stringbean, that Luz spoke up again, hoping to push that sight out of her mind for the next short while.

“D’you think this is why your dad couldn’t communicate with you?”

King’s eyes flicked down to the medallion, still unable to lock eyes with her. “Probably.”

Luz hummed. “But then why can you hear me?”

“…do you remember the torch from Trapper Island?”

She hummed again, before gasping. “Oh! That’s right!” When they’d come back to clean up the remaining Trapper cult on the island, before even Jamie had returned with his warning, among the things they’d brought back was one of the torches the Trappers had used to link King with Jamie.

King in turn had dug it out of storage and tried using it when she’d just started having her lucid In-Between nights, hoping something similar to last time would happen and he’d be able to astral project into the In-Between when asleep, to keep her company.

It hadn’t worked, with King tossing it into the Boiling Sea in frustration, and that had been that, but now it was clear something had happened.

“Let’s just call that some good luck and leave it at that,” Luz concluded, cringing as she heard the sound of bones unfolding and decompressing once again, paired by a shift in height.

With a canopy-shuddering, bone-tired sigh, King sat down on the edge of the clearing, silently observing the cottage and the small gravestone nearby.

Luz looked on as well, somehow feeling sadder for King than she could for herself. Or maybe she needed a lot more time to process anything.

“Y’know, you can take the cottage back with you once things are done, if you want,” she offered. “Maybe let Hooty nestle in. Keep it for when your eggs start hatching and need a homey place to grow up in.”

It’s not like she and Amity had anyone to bequeath the house to. Despite Amity’s occasional suggestions of adopting or having a surrogate, things had remained just the two of them, and their palismen.

Luz never did find it in herself to have another kid live in their cottage again.

King blinked, before jerking his head down to look at the medallion in confusion. “You want me to what?”

Luz grinned, pushing the somber thoughts away. If there was anything she was good at, it was cheering others up, and herself by proxy. “What, is that you admitting you’re not big and strong enough to bring the whole plot of land to your island in one go, lil’ bro?”

The supernatural glow in his eyes flashed, and Luz knew she’d successfully hit his competitive side.

“Are you really going to call me little even in death?” he asked with a characteristically annoyed whine as he stood up.

He hadn’t said he was going to bring the cottage with him, but she knew it was guaranteed now. Better than to leave it abandoned and to the elements.

“I am still six years older than you,” Luz teased.

King groaned, a flock of three-legged birds fleeing from their hiding place in the canopy.

“But now that you have a final date, I can catch up,” he returned with a grin, the somber mood fading into the background.

Luz gasped in fake outrage. “Are you mocking my death already? And that doesn’t count! I’m still around!”

King chuckled loudly as he stretched his wings, reorienting himself to point in the direction of the Hatchery. “But if we go by how long we’ve been around, before and after life, I’m over a million years old.”

Luz fell into silence as King took off, trees groaning and bending around him from the gusts of displaced wind.

…

“¡ Mierda! ”

He started laughing, the sound even shaking the viewing cube.

“King! Don’t you dare!” That would upend the natural order!

“Dare what, hermanita ?”

“Nooooo!”

Yeah, she felt a little better now.

Later on, Luz would give her Darth Vader impression a seven out of ten, before worrying about her inability to pass on.

2195

Izuku was worried.

It had been a few days without contact from Luz. A few days since she’d told him almost everything about her crazy life story and he hadn’t seen her since. The silence left him nervous, unable to do anything but sit here on the couch and scrolling through his phone, his mom once more out for afternoon errands.

Did him going behind her back in a way make her sour on him? Was she talking to the other quirkless teen? Had recounting her story made her need to step back and recoup herself?

Did she-

“Izuku! Amazing news!”

Izuku yelped and threw his phone across the room.

“ ¡Mier-! Sorry!” a muffled voice came from across the room, where his phone had thankfully landed on a stray cushion.

The moment he realized who the voice belonged to, Izuku rushed over, picking up his phone.

“L-Luz?”

Luz’s eyes crinkled. “Hey, bud. Sorry for dipping on you. After last time- Well, I got really excited about something, and my sense of time kinda flies out the window when I’m excited.”

That her sense of time taking a leave of absence meant she could busy herself for days on end without realizing made a sobering amount of sense, actually, with what she’d told him about her situation.

“It- It’s fine,” Izuku brushed off. “What did you get excited about?” The last time he’d seen her, she’d simply gone deathly silent, as if contemplating something, and then abruptly disappearing.

She smiled at him, her eyes glinting more than usual. “When you talked about things being much easier if I could pass this power on, basically turning someone else into a warlock like me, it made me think back on things and realize…I probably could now?”

“‘Probably could’?” What did that mean? And why was she telling him instead of whoever…

Luz took him echoing her words as her cue to continue. “Well, I knew I couldn’t actually pass the power on when I was alive. I was basically taking the spark my brother gave me and drawing in his dad’s power, but I was always just borrowing it. Only the one who it belonged to could actually give it out. But…” Her face split open in an anticipatory grin. “There was no point in thinking about it after I got stuck here, but since you made me consider it again, well, I’ve actually realized that, at some point, it has become my own.”

“So you can do it now,” Izuku realized with a smile of his own. Before confusion set in again. “But why are you telling me…”

Rather than annoyance at his lack of understanding, Luz gave him a fond look. “Izuku, buddy, you are so adorably dense.”

“W-Wait.” Izuku felt his cheeks heat up as the answer was practically shoved in his face. “You- You want to- to give it to me ?!”

“Why not?” she shrugged with indifference. “You’re the one I actually know and like. And I already know you’d put it to great use, with that great mind and big heart of yours.”

“I- I-I don’t- I don’t know if- if-” Izuku stammered, excitement warring with apprehension, disbelief, and uncertainty.

“Hey,” Luz said gently, realizing his building panic. “No need to tell me anything yet. Take some time to think about what I’m offering.” She paused, her brows knitting together. “Besides, that’s probably a good thing anyway. There’s a lot of risks and uncertainty involved here. Not a decision you can make under pressure.”

Izuku frowned too, his mind jumping onto the new subject.

“Risks? Like that it won’t actually work?”

Luz nodded. “That’s one thing, even if I’m pretty sure I can do it. For all I know it doesn’t work and goes horribly wrong instead. But there’s a lot more than that. Like”—she gestured at herself—“Things were very different for me. I had an entirely new body made for me to put it in, my power was given to me by a full-on Titan, and I was just a regular human. You’re definitely not dying on my watch, I’m not an actual titan, more of a human in a Titan overcoat, and you have all kinds of quirked ancestors passing vestigial adaptations down to you. It might go completely differently than I think it will.”

He nodded along, starting to get the bigger picture, but Luz began looking nervous.

“And even without those risks, I won’t lie and say I don’t have expectations for whoever I give it to.”

“What do you- Wait, you mean the things you left out of your story because you thought it’d- uh, carry responsibilities with them?” Izuku asked.

Luz snapped her fingers, grinning. “Exactly.” She frowned. “But basically, the one thing I really want is for someone to relay some really important information to whoever can do something about it.” She shrugged. “But that can be anyone, really. Right now there’s no real hurry, and- Now that I think about it, that doesn’t even need my power.” She smiled sheepishly. “As long as there’s someone quirkless and trustworthy enough who has the means to contact and convince the right people, it’s fine.”

“Then what about the rest?” he asked again. “Do- if you gave me your powers, what would you expect of me?”

Her eyes softened. “What I’d expect of you, is for you to use that power to fulfill your wish and accomplish your dreams, Izuku, no matter what they are.”

“O-Oh.” Izuku averted his eyes, not that it would hide the heartened blush from her.

“But even if passing it on works out, that won’t mean there aren’t other risks,” Luz continued, looking serious once more. “It feels like there are things brewing, big things, dangerous things, and it’s almost inevitable with this power that you’d be pulled into those things.”

“Like, ancient space gods big?” Izuku asked with a gulp.

“Oh, no! Titan no!” She paused. “Okay, maybe just one or two steps down from that,” she conceded, before brightening. “But that’ll all be years and years down the line. No doubt.”

Izuku nodded, though that particular worry wasn’t exactly alleviated.

And Luz noticed too. “But seriously, that’s why I’m telling you to take your time. Think long and hard on it. You’re my first pick, of course, but now that I know who else I can talk to, I can find others if you’re not comfortable with all the bad stuff I’ve brought up. Like that American girl!”

Her bright grin softened. “And of course I’m sticking around no matter what you pick—for however long you want me around, obviously”

Izuku hadn’t even considered the possibility yet, but now that she’d reassured him anyway it felt like a huge weight had fallen off.

“Th-That’s going to be a long time then, Noceda-san,” he said in relief, slipping into formalities.

Luz’s eye twitched.

“ ¡Oye! Just because you know my last name now doesn’t mean you can backpedal after all this time!”

He froze up, recalling his words.

“N-No! I-” he began to frantically object, but in his stutters a giggle escaped him. Hearing someone so demanding with only using first names was so backwards from what he knew. “I’m sorry!” he laughed out, only worsened by the ridiculous pout on Luz’s face. “I’m sorry!”

“ I swear, you Japanese ,” she mumbled in fake annoyance.

Izuku giggled again, before asking the first question that popped up in his head. “Actually, what does Noceda stand for?”

Luz quirked a brow at him, fake annoyance thrown aside. “Well, I like to think it means ‘Don’t yield,’ but without a space it comes from ‘walnut tree orchard’ or something.” Izuku snorted at the displeased look. “Just happy nobody in school was clever enough to call me nutty or nutter,” she added, before casting Izuku a judging glance.

“And don’t you snort at me, mister green hair green eyes called ‘Midoriya.’ If you were American you’d be called, like, Isaac Green and one of the main suspects in Clue.”

Izuku continued to laugh at Luz’s incensed ranting, only pausing when confusion hit.

“What’s Clue?”

A loud gasp escaped his phone screen.

“How can’t you- Wait,” Luz began, her eyes turning manic. “Now that you know when I’m from, I can tell you about all kinds of pre-quirk stuff! There’s so many awesome board games and manga and movies you’re missing out on!”

Izuku, whose interest into modern pre-quirk times had only dulled after a lack of available information, quickly found all remaining thoughts on the new revelation of Luz’s power and the decision he’d have to make washed away, stars practically manifesting in his eyes. And for the next several days, the decision was left to ruminate in the back of his mind.