Chapter IV: Awakening in a New World
"Wakefulness is a daily recurring brain state and state of consciousness in which an individual is conscious and engages in coherent cognitive and behavioral responses to the external world...The longer the brain has been awake, the greater the synchronous firing rates of cerebral cortex neurons. After sustained periods of sleep, both the speed and synchronicity of the neurons firing are shown to decrease."
-Wikipedia, "Wakefulness"
“...alternate universe hypothesis.”
“Izuku’s waking up.”
“Good, maybe…answers.”
As Midoriya Izuku awoke and the strange dream he’d been having faded away, sensation returned to him rather quickly. Coherency, however, did not, and he had to spend quite a bit of time getting his thoughts in order.
The first thing that he felt was the familiar pain of broken limbs. The fact that such a pain was familiar was probably an issue, but he could deal with the ramifications of [One For All]’s adverse effects on his health later. Right now, with his mind sleep-addled, his arms in pain, and a severe lack of adrenaline running through his veins, he couldn’t even pull together a coherent enough thought to wonder why he hadn’t been put on painkillers. Instead, he was focused on cataloging each sensation he felt as he came to. The second thing he noticed was that whatever he was lying on was cold and hard, followed by the dryness of his throat.
Somewhat sluggishly, he tried to recall the sequence of events that had brought him here. The last thing he clearly remembered was defeating Muscular. Everything after rescuing Kota was a blur of loud sounds and bright lights piercing the darkness. He could vaguely remember seeing the fire villain grab Kacchan by the throat, but then Uraraka had flown in and…messed with Kurogiri, somehow? Izuku wasn’t quite sure what had happened after that, just that the villains weren’t wherever they were.
That was probably when he passed out, now that he was thinking about it.
As more of his awareness slowly returned to him (had he sustained a head injury? Or was he just that tired?), he became aware of conversation happening in the room around him. It was low enough that he couldn’t tell what was being said, but at some point someone spoke up louder.
“Uraraka…”
That was Todoroki’s voice! Izuku definitely wasn’t in a hospital, but at least he wasn’t alone. And it sounded like Uraraka was here too!
“He has a fever.”
Were they talking about him? He didn’t feel particularly feverish, but given how easily Todoroki could control his own body temperature, Izuku didn’t have any reason to distrust him on his assessment. Him being ill in this situation was far from ideal, though, so Izuku hoped that Todoroki was mistaken.
Slowly, Izuku forced his eyes open, wincing as sunbeams hit them. He tried to speak—more to announce his presence than to actually say anything—but got nothing out of his mouth other than a dry cough.
That was enough to alert the others to his wakefulness, though. There was a blur of motion to his left and a cry of “Deku!” to his left, but before he could turn his head to look he felt something cold and a bit wet press against his lips. He reflexively took a few sips of the offered water, but the cup was taken away from him moments later. That gave him time to collect his thoughts, though, and he shifted his head (and that definitely wasn’t a pillow, but Izuku could figure out what was going on after he made sure everyone was okay) to look at his best friend.
There was a lot he wanted to ask—where were the others, where were the villains, where were they—but as he looked into his friend’s worried brown eyes the only thing he could stutter out was a confused “Uraraka?”
She opened her mouth to say something, but her eyes flicked down to his arms and whatever her response was died in her throat. Izuku frowned and tried to push himself up to get a better view of the room, but before he could even shift all that much Uraraka lightly placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him.
His movement at least seemed to let Uraraka find her voice again. “Try not to move too much, Deku,” she said. “Hold on, I can help you up.”
Izuku suddenly found himself weightless, but at this point he’d worked with Uraraka enough in team exercises that the shift in gravity didn’t faze him as much as it used to. In a few seconds, he had been repositioned so that he was sitting upright and his gravity was returned, finally letting Izuku properly look around the room.
It was rather dull, frankly. Everything seemed to be made of stone (barring the balled up fabric that his pillow was made of and that tied his arms to the splints he had just noticed) and it looked like whatever structure they were in was long abandoned. The sunbeams that had greeted him upon waking up weren’t coming through a window, they were coming through holes in the ceiling.
Uraraka and Todoroki were there too, obviously, and Asui—Tsu, Izuku mentally corrected—was sitting on her own approximation of a bed, with some of the same fabric wrapped around her left arm. With him that made four, but they were still missing the people that Izuku was most concerned about at the moment.
“Where is everyone?” he asked.
“Bakugo and Ida are searching for a source of fresh water,” Todoroki provided, and Izuku sagged in relief hearing that the League hadn’t managed to get Kacchan. “Tokoyami and Shoji have been looking for anything that we can use in the castle itself.”
Izuku blinked, surprised. They were in a castle? Before he could vocalize that query, though, another thought shot across his mind that took priority. “Wait, Shoji’s arm-”
“Is fine, kero,” Tsu interrupted. “He’s already grown back most of it.”
That was a relief. Shoji had already told him that it’d regrow, but it was nice to know that he was recovering well.
Izuku seemed to be the only one that had relaxed a bit, however. Uraraka was still focused on his arms, and Todoroki was looking at him with a hard gaze that promised bad news. “Speaking of injuries,” he said, meeting Izuku’s eyes, “your own are extensive.”
“I heard that I have a fever,” Izuku provided, “and I know that my arms are broken.”
“‘Broken’ doesn’t even begin to cover it, kero,” Tsu muttered, barely audible.
“Your left arm was a clean break, at least,” Todoroki continued. “You tying it back at the camp probably kept it from getting worse. I did what I could for the burn, but you’ll have scars on that arm.”
Izuku nodded. That made sense, given the situation. It didn’t look like they’d been captured by the League (everyone was far too calm for that), but clearly they didn’t have access to modern medicine at the moment. “And the right?”
“Your right arm was mangled, kero,” Tsu bluntly cut in. “You’ll probably need corrective surgery when we find whatever civilization is around here. And, kero, if it takes too long, we might have to amputate it.”
Izuku choked on his own spit, and he could see Uraraka tense beside him.
“Amputation?” she asked.
“Only as a last resort,” Todoroki clarified. “Dark Shadow can make her claws sharp enough to cut through in under a second, I could cauterize it, and we have enough fabric to fashion a tourniquet. However, it would only be an option if not amputating would outright kill you.” He gave them a second to chew on that information before he continued. “You have already gotten an infection, though, so we want to minimize the chances that it could get worse.”
Izuku nodded, seeing the logic in that. He didn’t like the prospect, but he’d prefer losing a limb to losing his life. To take his mind off the possibility, though, he changed the subject. “So, where are we, then? You said that we’re in a castle?”
“Yes…” Todoroki said before trailing off, like he was unsure of how to continue.
Tsu, ever blunt, simply said what he was unwilling to. “We’re not on Earth, kero.”
Izuku’s mind stopped working for a second. “What?”
Uraraka made a sound that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “It’s my fault,” she said in a tone that made it seem like she was talking to herself more than anyone else. “I thought touching Kurogiri would stop his warp but now we’re stuck on some alien planet and Deku has some alien disease and it’s all my fault.”
“You didn’t know what would happen, kero,” Tsu reassured her, though it didn’t do much to stop Uraraka from spiraling.
“[Zero Gravity] brought us to another planet?” Izuku asked before he could stop himself and force more tact into the question.
At least it snapped Urarka’s attention to his question specifically. She nodded.
“That’s amazing!” Izuku said, despite the many reservations he had about actually being on a different planet. He’d had enough of his own panic attacks to know that she didn’t need more negativity at the moment. “If we could figure out how to replicate the effect, it might even be a way to bypass the Kessler Syndrome!”
“You’re…not mad?” Uraraka asked.
Izuku cocked his head. “Tsu already said that you didn’t know, and I don’t think anyone could have predicted this.” He attempted to shrug before a spike of pain stopped him from moving his shoulders. Ignoring that, he continued. “Besides, if [Zero Gravity] brought us here, [Zero Gravity] can bring us back.”
Uraraka calmed down from that, though she still had a worried look in her eyes. Izuku didn’t blame her; he was self-aware enough to admit that had he been in her situation, he’d probably still be blaming himself.
After a moment, though, the look in her eyes went from worry to determination. Uraraka clenched her fists and nodded. “Right. Whatever that was can’t have been one-way.”
Todoroki cleared his throat. “Regardless, for the time being, our priority is survival.”
Izuku nodded once again. “How can I help?”
Uraraka sighed beside him, Tsu gave him a flat look, and Todoroki made sure to maintain direct eye contact. “You can help by recovering, Midoriya.”
Izuku furrowed his brow and opened his mouth to retort, but Uraraka beat him to the punch. “Deku, if you say something like that you still have your legs I am going to tie you down until you agree to stop breaking your bones.”
Izuku closed his mouth and turned to look at his best friend, who glared back with the same intensity she had when Mister Aizawa had announced the Sports Festival. She was dead serious about making sure he didn’t exert himself too much. It only took a few seconds for him to relent. “Alright, fine, I’ll stay in the infirmary.”
Uraraka relaxed at his admission, and the other two nodded. “We’ll hold you to that, kero,” Tsu said. “Ochako, Todoroki, you two should be on Midoriya-watch.”
Izuku sputtered at the insinuation. “I don’t need to be monitored.”
The other three looked at each other for a moment before turning to him. “Deku, you ran towards a giant robot to save me during the entrance exam,” Uraraka said.
“There’s also yesterday, kero, when you ran after the villains with two broken arms to save Bakugo,” Tsu piped up. “And you tried to help save Mister Aizawa at the USJ instead of running away like we were supposed to.”
Everyone turned to Todoroki, expecting him to add something.
“The Sports Festival and Hosu.”
He did not elaborate further, but Izuku did not need him to. His point was made.
Izuku sighed. “Okay so maybe I have a problem.”
“You don’t have to put the whole world on your back, Deku,” Uraraka said softly. “There’s eight of us here. You can afford to rest.”
The other two nodded affirmatively, and Izuku nodded back a bit hesitantly.
There were a few seconds of awkward silence before Izuku broke it. “So, you said that Kacchan and Ida are looking for water?”
“Well, Bakugo is, kero,” Tsu responded. “Ida ran after him shouting that no one should be alone in a dangerous forest.” She tapped a finger to her chin in thought. “I wonder how that’s going.”
Bakugo Katsuki was angry. That, however, was his natural state of being, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he was livid. Or vehement. Perhaps even pissed off. And woe be upon whomever pisses off a member of the Bakugo family.
This whole situation was fucked, really. Katsuki might’ve even preferred being kidnapped by the League of Dumbasses over being stuck on another planet with a bunch of extras. At least then he’d have a chance to blow the assholes up, instead of being stuck wandering this shitty forest with Four Eyes, looking for a river.
They knew one had to exist; something had to have carved out that chasm near the castle, even if it had since changed course. All they had done so far was choose a direction and start walking, hoping they stumbled across it or got close enough to hear the water. Honestly, Katsuki was most ticked off about Four Eyes’ insistence that he not go alone.
Sure, the forest definitely had some dangerous shit in it, but nothing they’d encountered so far was anywhere near as powerful as the wolf from last night. The only thing that came close was the lion-bat-scorpion thing they’d encountered a few minutes ago, but whatever it was, it was still a wild animal. One well-placed explosion had it scampering back into the underbrush.
Worst of all, though, was Four Eyes’ attempts at, ugh, making conversation.
“I must insist, Bakugo, that we be more methodical in our search, lest we lose ourselves in these woods!”
Katsuki turned to glower at him before wordlessly gesturing to the series of trees that he had marked earlier with his explosions for that exact purpose. Of course he had already thought of that. Plus, the explosions were useful for keeping the wildlife away. Katsuki was resourceful like that.
“We aren’t getting lost, Four Eyes. If you still manage it I think you deserve to get eaten by whatever shitty animal finds you first.”
Katsuki relished in viewing the scandalized look Four Eyes had after that. Pissing other people off was like drugs to him. Given how his Old Hag acted, he suspected that it was genetic.
Without another word, Katsuki whirled around again to continue his search, tuning out Four Eyes’ next lecture about “propriety” and “working together” or some shit like that. He was Bakugo fucking Katsuki, future number one hero. He didn’t need any extras riding his coattails.
Hell, none of the extras he was trapped with could even give him a decent spar. It was a bit of a shame that Shitty Hair wasn’t there, because the only other extras that could stand up to him were Birdbrain in the right environment and Deku. And Katsuki would sooner chop a finger off than spar with Deku with his late-blooming-ass shitty “borrowed power” quirk.
Katsuki still needed to beat some answers out of him for that line, though. He still had no idea what the fuck Deku was on that afternoon.
Before Katsuki could descend into another rant about Deku and his posse’s inherent shittiness, the sound of running water hit his ears. Grinning, he turned towards where he thought he heard it coming from and started sprinting, ignoring Four Eyes’ indignant shout of “Bakugo!” as he chased after him.
Neither of them noticed the blue eyes that tracked them from the trees, or the patch of blue flowers that they ran through.
As Zecora returned to her cottage, having been out gathering materials for some antiviral potions—with summer came illness, and the plundervines had destroyed her prepared stock—she pondered the two creatures she saw. She hadn’t approached, of course; approaching an unknown creature in the Everfree Forest was often a death sentence. Still, they were unlike any creature she had seen or read about, which for somepony as well-traveled as Zecora was saying a lot.
Perhaps Twilight Sparkle would know more? She was in Canterlot at the moment for the Summer Sun Celebration, but Zecora was due for a resupply trip into Ponyville anyway. She could track her down and ask her then. Perhaps they could even make an expedition out of it, since with Princess Twilight’s magical might there was very little that would be able to stand up to them.
Zecora hummed in thought as she approached her home. “I have seen much of the world, this is true,” she said to herself, still pondering the creatures, “but I have to wonder, what in the world are you?”
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The truth is that I'm already looking forward to the meeting between Izuku and Twilight.
They are both adorable and endearing nerds.
I love bote histories and I really hope to see both of them completed