A cosmic coincidence and a unique interaction of gravikinetic quirks send eight hero students to Equestria. How might they adapt, and can they even hope to get home?
At 19:47 on 19 July 2157, eight students of UA’s Class 1-A vanished off the face of the Earth.
Due to a series of cosmic coincidences, a bored god of chaos, and the unpredictable effect gravikinetic quirks have on each other, an interaction between [Zero Gravity] and [Warp Gate] ends with a group of superpowered high schoolers landing in the Everfree Forest. It’s a good thing that UA’s motto is “Plus Ultra,” because these teens may need to push past their limits just to survive their first night in Equestria. Let alone figuring out a way back home.
Well, at least the locals may be able to help—assuming Bakugo doesn’t scare them off first.
Cover art is a placeholder for now. Romance tag is specifically for Green Tea.
"In geometry, a hypersurface is a generalization of the concepts of hyperplane, plane curve, and surface. A hypersurface is a manifold or an algebraic variety of dimension n − 1, which is embedded in an ambient space of dimension n, generally a Euclidean space..." -Wikipedia, "Hypersurface"
Ida Tenya was having a bad day. He was unsure whether he would later look back on this as the worst day, but it was certainly in his top five. Today, after all, marked the second time his class had been attacked by villains, and the third time he, personally, had encountered them. Those three incidents, along with the day of this year’s Sports Festival when he learned of his brother’s injury, made up four of his top five worst days of all time.
The fifth was the day that Tensei broke the news to him that Santa wasn’t real. It was a formative memory and Tenya was still of the opinion that maintaining the lie in the first place was detrimental!
Regardless, much like the USJ and Hosu incidents, this attack on their summer camp sprang from nowhere. The random lottery had placed him and Hagakure on a team for the test of courage, and while he would freely admit to having been startled by several of Class 1-B’s antics, the invisible girl behind him had seemed to screech at every passing noise.
Her heightened awareness from fright saved them, however, as when a pink gas began spreading through the forest, Hagakure noticed it first and proceeded to inform him with another shriek. He had paid close attention to his sister class’s quirks during the second round of the Sports Festival to avoid surprise, so Tenya was certain that this wasn’t the work of another student. None of the pros with them had a quirk like this (and they weren’t supposed to be involved in this event, anyway), and Tenya doubted that Kota would freely participate in anything involving his class. Thus, only one possibility remained:
His class was being attacked by villains.
Again.
So Tenya did the sensible thing. He deduced that the gas was likely dangerous quickly enough to pick Hagakure up, activate [Engine], and flee. Unfortunately, their positioning in the path forced Tenya to run further into the woods, skirting around the low-hanging cloud as he dodged around trees and rocks. He had to stay mindful of Hagakure’s positioning in his arms as well—her invisibility made it difficult to judge whether or not any given obstacle might bump into her.
Thankfully, he had already explored quite a bit of the Beast’s Forest during training over the past couple of days, and was by this point well-experienced in using his quirk in the woods. Still, the gas cloud was large enough and mobile enough to delay his attempts to return to the camp by a few minutes.
When he arrived at the starting area of the test of courage, the fighting seemed to already be over. Pixie-Bob was unconscious from a head wound, though Mandalay was tending to her while Tiger used [Pilabody] to keep the two unconscious villains restrained.
After a moment, Hagakure coughed. “Uh, Ida? You can probably put me down, now.”
There was another beat of silence before Tenya flushed in embarrassment that his first instinct to extract her was to pick her up bridal style. Still, he made sure to avoid dropping her, at least, as he hurriedly allowed her to stand up herself. Almost immediately, he adjusted his glasses and bowed. “I must apologize for any impropriety, Hagakure!”
The invisible girl scoffed amusedly. “It’s cool, don’t worry.”
Before Tenya could go any further with his apologies, Mandalay cut in. “You two kittens should get back to the lodge.”
Hagakure seemed to nod along with that, if Tenya was reading her body language properly, but he himself frowned. “How many are still in the woods?” he asked. “If needed, I can extract-”
“Regardless of how fast you are, I am not authorizing a student to actively put themselves at risk running into a villain attack!” Mandalay cut in.
That…was fair, Tenya considered. As much as he desired to help his classmates, he would do no good if he took himself out in the process. Hagakure almost immediately ran off on the path to the lodge, and he was about to follow before Tiger spoke.
“Not that that stopped Midoriya,” He grumbled under his breath. “What the hell was he thinking running in with two broken arms?” Clearly Tenya hadn’t been meant to hear that, but it was still loud enough for him to just barely make out. Mandalay shot him a look as Tenya stopped, his emotions suddenly—and strongly—conflicting with his logic.
Midoriya had run back into the woods. Midoriya, who had proven himself far more heroic than Tenya during the entrance exam when he broke himself to save Uraraka. Midoriya, who had positively mangled his hand during the Sports Festival just to break through to Todoroki. Midoriya, who had risked life and limb to save Tenya from himself in Hosu. And now, presumably after facing down some other villain and down two limbs, he still ran back into the fray to save more people.
Midoriya’s motivations, Tenya knew, were far different from what his own were in Hosu. But his attempt to deliver vigilante justice unto Stain and Midoriya running into a villain attack with both his arms broken would have the same result: both were effectively suicidal charges. And when Tenya broke the rules and got himself in over his head, Midoriya had put himself at risk to save him.
So how could Tenya call himself Midoriya’s friend if he didn’t return the favor?
Mandalay had apparently caught onto his thought process and wasted no time making her displeasure known. “Ida, don’t-”
“I’m sorry, Mandalay,” Tenya apologized, “but Midoriya is my closest friend. I cannot allow him to face this alone.”
Any of Mandalay’s further orders were lost on the wind as Tenya fired up [Engine] and sped off into the trees.
Uraraka Ochako started running as soon as Aoyama’s laser hit the magician villain, but she could tell that she and Tsu were going to be too late. Shoji had managed to grab one of the marbles but the fire villain was too fast and got the other before Todoroki could. And now Kurogiri was preparing to warp and the villains were going to get away all because they weren’t fast enough.
She heard an engine behind her, and quickly glanced over her shoulder before she allowed herself to regain some hope. Ida was there and quickly approaching! Maybe they still had a chance!
Looking back ahead, Ochako tried to put together a plan as quickly as she could. Back at the USJ, when she had hit Kurogiri with [Zero Gravity], it seemed to interrupt his warp. At the very least, he had been distracted enough to not stop Ida from retreating. It wasn’t much to go on, but it had to be enough; the fire villain had his hand around Bakugo’s neck and Kurogiri’s mist was starting to spread.
This probably wouldn’t be any better than Deku’s earlier plan, but it was something! She wrapped her right hand around her left arm, negating her gravity and doing her best to ignore the sudden bout of nausea that came with it—Ochako blamed the blood loss and desperation for momentarily forgetting about that side effect of her quirk. Still, she pushed through it and hoped beyond hope that Ida was close enough to hear her as she shouted. “Ida, throw me at Kurogiri!”
She felt her friend grab her and, thankfully not questioning it, hurl her forward. The throw added to Ida’s already considerable speed, and within a second Ochako had broken out of the trees and into the clearing. But Ida’s aim had been off, and for half a moment she despaired that, despite everything, they were still going to lose.
Then Tsu’s tongue slammed into her side, and Ochako’s trajectory was redirected.
Her entry had been swift enough that none of the villains had time to properly react, and Ochako reached out, her left hand splayed to activate her quirk as Ida and Tsu were entering the clearing. Her fingers brushed against Kurogiri’s metal brace just as he dissolved into mist.
[Zero Gravity] and [Warp Gate] activated simultaneously.
Under most people’s ideas of physics, gravity is a fundamental force of the universe, alongside electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. While this is sufficient for most cases—Newtonian gravity was good enough to get humanity to the Moon, after all—the idea of gravity being a force at all is fundamentally flawed. In 1915, Albert Einstein published “The Field Equations of Gravitation,” in which he detailed his theory of general relativity, turning humanity’s understanding of gravity on its head. It introduced the idea of spacetime, a four-dimensional manifold that makes up the fabric of reality itself, containing all of three-dimensional space along with one dimension of time.
The global curvature of this manifold was a hotly debated topic among physicists for decades, but later calculations confirmed that, as far as humanity could tell, the universe is flat. One could approximate it with a four-dimensional hyperplane.
Locally, however, reality is curved. Gravity is the effect of energy, which warps and curves the hypersurface of the universe, on spacetime. This is barely noticeable at planetary scales—the entire Earth only curves local spacetime by about one part per million—though around extremely dense objects like neutron stars and especially black holes, the curvature is noticeable even to the naked eye.
[Warp Gate], however, abuses this fact of reality to an extreme degree. In a range of around four hundred kilometers, Kurogiri can temporarily link two points in four-dimensional space such that they occupy the same three-dimensional coordinates. For a lower dimensional analogue, one can imagine folding a piece of paper to force two points together, an analogy that many before have heard to describe a wormhole. Creating wormholes is, after all, effectively what [Warp Gate] does.
[Zero Gravity], on the other hand, is far more subtle in its manipulations of spacetime. In order to conserve energy and both angular and linear momentum while maintaining the observable effects, [Zero Gravity] constantly shifts the spacetime around an object under its effect to keep it tethered to the Sun and to Earth’s rotation. Otherwise, any object Uraraka Ochako affected would supersonically shoot off to the east.
Unfortunately for everyone in the clearing that fateful Tuesday night, [Zero Gravity]’s subtle effects on spacetime were still enough to disrupt [Warp Gate]’s more overt effects. Spacetime almost snapped back to its natural configuration just as Kurogiri was beginning to open a wormhole, sending a small gravitational wave through the Earth and greatly confusing the few scientists still keeping an eye on LIGO. [Warp Gate], however, was still active and searching for valid coordinates to warp to. Ordinarily, this would not be a problem, but Uraraka Ochako had interrupted Kurogiri in the small amount of time it took to actually open a gate, leaving his quirk searching for coordinates off of the manifold of the universe.
And none involved had yet considered that there may be more than three spatial dimensions.
On another manifold, in another world, infinitely far away in three dimensions but only twenty-three kilometers away in an orthogonal fourth, the Tree of Harmony pulsed as its Elements were returned to it. A blast of harmony magic destroyed the many plundervines that had begun snaking their way across Equestria, releasing the Princesses and allowing Luna’s starry night to take hold. Unbeknownst to everypony, however, said blast of harmony magic was not limited to three-dimensional space and, in a cosmic coincidence, coincided with Uraraka Ochako activating her quirk on Kurogiri.
And [Warp Gate], ever eager to serve its master and attracted to this energy blast, took the first chance it had to find a valid set of coordinates and pulled.
Discord, lounging in his home in Chaosville, sat bolt upright as he felt something yank on the fabric of reality. Snapping his paw, he slowed time to get a proper look-see at whoever was trying to break into Equestria’s reality. He was rather fond of it, nowadays, or at the very least a pony living in it, and as much as he loved a good bit of chaos damaging reality itself for it wouldn’t be worth it. After all, he couldn’t mess with ponies if there weren’t any ponies to mess with!
The draconequus hummed in thought as he flashed into the landing site and inspected the newly-formed wormhole. It was effectively the same effect as any other teleporter, even if it was coming from outside of the universe. But oh what was on the other end was fascinating indeed. Humans! He hadn’t messed with that species in millennia! Oh, if only Jean-Luc was still around.
Still, these new humans seemed a bit at odds with each other, what with one of them having his hand around another’s neck and by the stars those were a lot of burns. There were other injuries as well, but Discord could at least clearly tell who was attacking who with a tiny bit of mind reading. It would be a trivial matter to separate the two groups, at least, but by now he couldn’t stop them from coming through unless he put a lot of effort into it. Even for a creature as magnificent as him, transdimensional travel still took a lot out of him.
Meh, he couldn’t really be bothered. As long as Fluttershy was safe he didn’t really care. He waved his talon and wrenched the wormhole into having two openings and, after making sure that all of the humans were alive and made it through, teleported himself back to Chaosville.
He, of course, already had a bucket of popcorn prepared. Humans! In Equestria! Oh, this was going to be glorious.
In the Beast’s Forest, Aoyama Yuga, Frenchman, hero student, and unwilling spy for All For One, stared blankly at the space the villains and his classmates had been in only moments before. Trembling, he forced himself out of the bush he was hiding in and stumbled as he forced back the bile rising in his throat.
Eight. Eight of his classmates had just been kidnapped, two of whom had had serious injuries! Shoji was missing an arm and Midoriya’s were both broken, and now they were at the mercy of villains. And it was entirely his fault. He had given the League their location, after all.
The faces of his classmates flashed through his mind. The shock on Tokoyami’s after he had been unmarbled. Midoriya’s despair at failing to save Bakugo. Everyone's relief when Uraraka came flying in. The sheer determination in her expression. And everyone’s surprised faces when Kurogiri just took them all.
Yuga stumbled again, fighting back the urge to vomit from the stress. He…he couldn’t do this anymore. He couldn’t keep giving information to All For One. Not after this. He would have to turn himself in.
This time, Yuga actually did vomit into a nearby bush as the thought crossed his mind. If he did this, if he went to the heroes and gave himself up…
All For One would almost certainly kill his parents.
Whimpering, an indecisive Yuga found a tree to sit against.
“Merde.”
In a bar in Yokohama, Shigaraki Tomura scratched at his neck in annoyance. Kurogiri had come back with Magne and Spinner—who both had been knocked the fuck out, disappointingly—and apparently had already delivered the chainsaw Nomu to Sensei. So why the hell was he taking so long to grab the objective and get back?
The clock on the wall continued to tick annoyingly and Tomura’s scratching increased. “Where the fuck is the rest of my party?”
The television in the back remained silent.
In a warehouse in Kamino Ward, All For One frowned. He almost constantly used a mental quirk to keep his Nomu in line, and it was particularly useful for keeping an eye on Kurogiri. He may have still been a Nomu, but he was sapient enough to be potentially worrying, and All For One did not want to risk his best warper to the possibility of Shirakumo Oboro’s consciousness resurfacing, as low of a risk as that was.
Shirakumo had already been dead for hours when the Doctor operated on him, after all.
But still, something had happened to the mental connection he shared with Kurogiri. Either the warper was unconscious, which would be a minor setback to his plans, or dead—well, more dead than he was already—which would be a major setback to his plans. Regardless, it would be a good idea to get a read on his location.
Truly, he couldn’t wait until Tomura’s little league got back to him with [Search].
Shifting, All For One looked towards Doctor Garaki, all the while mentally cursing the buffoon for taking his eyes six years prior. [Thermal Vision] was simply not comparable to normal eyesight, but he made do. “Doctor,” All For One spoke, and Garaki immediately turned around to face him. [Thermal Vision] couldn’t make out much detail, but [Empathy] let All For One know that his doctor was showing, somewhat surprisingly, trace amounts of fear.
Now, someone fearing All For One was not a novel occurrence. He was a one hundred thirty-seven year old supervillain who made a name for himself stealing quirks and had ruled the Japanese underworld for over a century. But Doctor Kyudai Garaki was one of the few people who never feared him. In fact, the only time All For One ever recalled Garaki showing fear was when confronted with something he truly couldn’t understand.
“Yes, Master?” Garaki asked.
“Do we have Kurogiri’s location?”
Garaki gulped, actually gulped, and All For One knew he had immediately hit the nail on the head. “No.”
All For One hummed. “Is the signal being blocked, perhaps?”
“That’s…doubtful,” Garaki said. “That tracker had dozens of failsafes that would have at least triggered first before the signal cut.” He looked back at one of his screens. This setup was rather different from his usual lab, but the pair were preparing for what All For One knew would be the end of All Might, so they had to compromise with the warehouse. “The signal was just…gone.”
And in a clearing in the Everfree Forest, not far from the Castle of the Two Sisters, eight high schoolers fell out of a purple, misty portal that promptly vanished. Immediately, one let out an involuntary wail of pain as his already severely battered and broken right arm wound up wedged underneath him.
Uraraka Ochako was the first to move in response to Deku’s cry, quickly negating his gravity and floating the weight off of his arm. All he could do was let out a pained whimper in response, and Ochako felt her heart shatter at the noise.
It wasn’t long before the adrenaline started to wear off and, the danger seeming to have passed, Deku passed out from the pain.
The others were quick to push themselves to their feet as well, and Todoroki lit his left hand to offer some light when the darkness around Tokoyami began writhing too much. It took a few seconds, but Shoji was the one to eventually ask the question everyone was thinking.
“Where are we?”
It was still nighttime, but the forest they were in wasn’t anything like the Beast’s Forest. The very air around them felt oppressive, like they were constantly being watched. The trees were different too, but Ochako wasn’t well-versed enough in botany to be able to tell the species.
What she was well-versed in, however, was astronomy. And looking up, her heart fell. There weren’t any constellations she immediately recognized. No Sagittarius, no Ursa Major, no Cygnus.
Alright, fine, maybe that just meant they were in the southern hemisphere? Except…she couldn’t see the Southern Cross either…or the Milky Way, for that matter.
Finally, dread beginning to pool in her heart, Ochako looked to the Moon and almost physically recoiled. The crater patterns were wrong, and the Oceanus Procellarum just straight-up didn’t exist. And on top of everything else, it was far, far too big in the sky.
Fuck.
“Guys,” she said, snapping everyone’s attention to her, “the stars are wrong.”
“The fuck does that one mean, Round Face?”
Ochako lowered her gaze, but couldn’t bring herself to meet anyone’s eyes as her voice wavered. “The stars are wrong,” she repeated. “We’re not on Earth.”
"A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world..." -Wikipedia, "Forest"
There were a few seconds of blessed silence before the screaming inevitably started.
“WHAT THE FUCK?”
“We’re not on Earth?”
“But the idea of any interstellar-capable warp quirk is preposterous!”
“I make gravity my bitch and Todoroki completely ignores thermodynamics but you’re drawing the line at FTL travel?”
Everyone’s gazes snapped to Uraraka, taken aback by the swear.
She blinked in confusion before realization dawned on her face and she blushed. “I grew up around construction workers and I’m under a lot of stress right now, cut me some slack for forgetting to mind my language.”
Before anyone could recover enough to comment on that, Todoroki apparently decided that he wanted people’s bewildered attention instead.
“What if the night sky is an illusion maintained by world governments so they can make money off of people who believe in star signs?”
No one seemed to have a coherent response to that for a solid ten seconds as everyone just stared at him. “I…what?” Uraraka asked, completely befuddled.
Todoroki frowned, confused. “When I asked Fuyumi for advice on building and maintaining friendships she told me that cracking a joke can relieve tension.” His voice was as deadpan as usual, even as his eyebrows furrowed in thought. “And Natsuo once told me that stating something obviously false like that is considered funny.”
“Oh, so are all your conspiracy theories jokes, kero?” Tsu asked. “Like thinking that All Might and Midoriya are rela-”
“I fully stand by my theory that All Might is Midoriya’s father and nothing short of meeting this ‘Midoriya Hisashi’ in person will convince me otherwise.”
Once again conversation stalled, giving way to the ambient noises of the forest. Or it would have if not for Bakugo’s steadily rising volume of growling drowning out those ambient noises, that last comment from Todoroki seeming to gain his ire.
Before he could speak, however, Tokoyami Fumikage was the one to break the silence. “What a mad banquet of darkness.”
For once, Dark Shadow didn’t pipe up in his mind to call him an edgelord, for she was apparently just as perplexed as he was.
Fumikage’s statement seemed to cut through the rising tension, at least, and Bakugo just let off an annoyed sigh. “Alright, we’ll get to Icy-hot apparently not believing in Uncle Hisashi later.” Whirling around, he accusingly pointed a finger at Uraraka. “What the fuck do you mean about not being on Earth?”
Uraraka cringed and looked back up at the sky. “Exactly that,” she said. “There aren’t any constellations I recognize—northern or southern hemisphere—and the Moon is too big. And also doesn’t have the right crater patterns.”
Bakugo growled. “Well how the hell are we gonna get back?”
All at once, the reality of the situation sank in for the group. They were stuck quite possibly light-years from Earth and Kurogiri was nowhere around. Uraraka in particular paled, still desperately looking up at the sky. “I…I don’t know. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Shit.”
Tsu consolingly patted her shoulder. “You couldn’t have known, kero.”
“Yeah, but now we're trapped,” Uraraka emphasized. Her gaze returned to ground level, darting around everyone in the clearing. “We’re trapped on another planet and can’t get back and-” Her eyes landed on the unconscious Midoriya, still floating in the air from her quirk. Particularly, they landed on his arms. “And Deku’s hurt.”
She took a step forward, probably to reach out to him, and immediately her leg gave out. Tsu caught her before she hit the ground. “You are too, kero. You got stabbed, remember?”
Adrenaline’s a helluva drug, ain’t it? Dark Shadow said in Fumikage’s mind. She’s only just feeling the pain from getting stabbed. That blonde bitch better hope we don’t find her, else she’s gonna regret daring to hurt our friend.
Calm yourself, Dark Shadow, Fumikage commanded, wincing as he struggled to keep his quirk in line. Even though they weren’t particularly close to Uraraka, Dark Shadow had been feeling extra protective of the class since Shoji was injured.
At that thought, Fumikage had to focus once more on keeping Dark Shadow contained as he turned to look at Shoji. Todorki had given him his jacket earlier to act as an emergency tourniquet, but they would want to find something better soon. For both his injuries and the others’. “Perhaps we should take stock of our injuries before we continue with anything else,” Fumikage said.
Ida nodded in approval. “I agree! First aid is incredibly important in the field!”
“After that, we find shelter, a source of fresh water, and then we can worry about food,” Bakugo added, before grumbling at the others’ surprised looks. “What, have you extras never been camping before?”
Ida cleared his throat. “Ah, yes, Bakugo is correct. In any case, I am uninjured.”
Dark Shadow forced herself out of Fumikage without warning, but there was only a brief moment of panic before Todoroki lit his left side and she shrank to a manageable level. “Fumi and I are a-okay too!”
“Tch, Icy-hot and I made it out fine, too,” Bakugo said, his expression morphing into a feral grin. “Tooth fucker couldn’t land a single hit on us.” His gaze turned to the other four. “Obviously Deku and Shoji got hurt, but what about you two? You were fighting the knife bitch before we showed up, right?”
“I have a small cut that isn’t bleeding too bad. I can bandage it pretty easily,” Uraraka offered, an arm around Tsu to help her stand. She yawned. “But my main issue is blood loss from the syringe.”
Tsu nodded and opened her mouth, allowing her tongue to spill out of it a bit, revealing a nasty gash on it. “My tongue got cut pretty bad, kero. Not much we can do without gauze, though.”
With that, Shoji finally spoke up. “My own injury isn’t terribly severe,” he said, drawing incredulous stares from everyone as they gazed upon his missing arm. Gesturing with the other five, he removed the bloodied tourniquet to reveal new skin already covering the wound. “This was one of my extra arms; [Dupli-Arms] will have it regenerated within a day. Honestly, I’m most concerned about Midoriya.”
The teen in question was still floating, the remains of his shirt hastily wrapped around his arms in an effort to keep the breaks from getting worse. Based on the state of his right arm, though, that effort was futile. What skin they could see beyond the wrappings was purpled, looking eerily like what had happened to his hand in the Sports Festival, just applied to the entire arm.
Fumikage nodded gravely. “In combating the darkness, he seems to have given up much of his light.”
Edgelord, Dark Shadow commented.
Fumikage ignored her.
“We need something to splint his arms before we move him,” Ida commented.
Without a word, Todoroki stamped his right foot on the ground, generating an appreciable amount of ice. He carefully melted the base of two of the spikes before walking over to where Midoriya was floating, under a meter from Uraraka and Tsu. “Uraraka, float these.”
Uraraka, understanding what Todoroki was getting at, reached out at both of the ice spikes in turn, negating their gravity. Todoroki positioned the spikes next to Midoriya before taking his own shirt off, at which Uraraka blushed and looked away and Tsu let out a surprised croak.
Without any preamble, Todoroki began ripping his shirt apart. “We need something to secure the splint and I can thermoregulate the best of us here,” he explained.
“Ah, good thinking, Todoroki!” Ida praised. “That should last long enough for us to find splints that won’t melt.”
“I can get started looking for a cave or some shit while you take care of that,” Bakugo volunteered.
Uraraka yawned again. “Right, guess we’re following the Bakugo Wilderness Survival Guide,” she said.
“What was that, Round Face?”
Apparently deciding to push their luck, Tsu spoke up next. “You know, kero, I would’ve expected you to have blown something up by now, Bakugo. You’re being oddly calm, kero.”
Bakugo crossed his arms, clearly annoyed. “Oh I’m pissed at you extras for landing us here, but I can prioritize survival for now.” Under his breath, but unintentionally loud enough for Fumikage to hear, he added, “Besides, Auntie Inko would kill me if I let Deku or his shitty friends die on me.”
Dark Shadow broke down laughing in Fumikage’s mind.
“In any case,” Ida said, getting back on track, “Uraraka, could you float someone else? We may be able to search for shelter better at a higher vantage point!”
“Yeah, I’ve-” she was interrupted by another yawn—clearly the events of the evening had left Uraraka exhausted. “I’ve got a bit left in me. I’m just a bit queasy right now.”
Ida frowned. “If you’re unsure-”
“It’s fine,” Uraraka insisted. “Blasty, get over here.”
“Blasty?” Bakugo asked, sounding legitimately offended as he stalked over.
It seemed that the irony was lost on him.
“Too tired to care,” Uraraka retorted. “You can move midair with your explosions, right?”
Bakugo’s offended expression morphed into a grin as Uraraka reached out and removed his gravity. Immediately, even as Uraraka doubled over and tried not to lose her dinner, explosions sprung from his palms and he rocketed into the air.
Twenty seconds later, more explosions rang out as he descended back onto the ground. “Good news: I found shelter. Bad news: we might be dealing with shitty alien extras.” He pointed into the trees. “There’s a castle a few kilometers that way.”
Uraraka’s eyes seemed to sparkle, even as she fought back her nausea. “First contact,” she whispered in an almost reverent voice.
Dark Shadow’s mental laughter seemed to grow louder. There might be intelligent aliens involved and his first thought is to call them shitty extras?
Truly, Bakugo revels in the dark more than many of us, Fumikage thought back.
I’ve lived in your mind for fifteen years and I still have no idea what you mean by that.
Ida cleared his throat to once again bring everyone’s attention to him. He had helped Todoroki get the ice splints onto Midoriya’s arms and was now cradling their classmate. “Uraraka, if you could cancel your quirk-”
Before Ida could finish, Uraraka had already jammed her hands together. “Release!”
Ida grunted as he was suddenly carrying Midoriya’s full weight and Bakugo stumbled a bit as his weight returned. Midoriya let out an involuntary whimper in his sleep. “As I was saying,” Ida said, “I can carry Midoriya. Tsu, can you keep Uraraka standing?”
Tsu nodded with a ribbit, and Uraraka frowned at needing the assistance. She didn’t complain aloud, though.
“Shoji, stay close to the four of us,” Ida added. “I know your injury isn’t particularly bothersome, but keeping close would still be ideal.”
Shoji nodded.
“Four Eyes has got the right idea,” Bakugo said, and most of the others blinked in surprise at him agreeing with someone else. “I’ll take point and Icy-hot and Birdbrain can watch our flank. We don’t know what lives in these woods.”
“I must protest, Bakugo,” Ida retorted. “Tokoyami and Dark Shadow are effectively two sets of eyes, so it would be most beneficial to have Todoroki in the front with you.”
Bakugo crossed his arms. “Tch, I don’t really care. Just figure it out so we can get moving already.”
In the end, Ida’s suggestion won out. The walk, though, had been relatively peaceful so far, even if Asui Tsuyu’s instincts were constantly screaming at her that something dangerous was watching them. [Frog] didn’t give her any particularly heightened senses, but a frog’s natural position in the food web carried some instincts with it into her quirk. Including the generally good spatial awareness of prey animals.
Still, well over a kilometer into their trek through the forest, and those instincts hadn’t bore fruit yet. It was at the point that Tsu was finally allowing herself to relax a bit, considering that the general chill might be putting her on edge as well. It wasn’t enough to get her to start brumating, but it was still uncomfortable for her. Shivering a bit, she focused on her half-asleep friend.
Ochako was leaning hard on her right shoulder. The brunette’s left arm was wrapped around Tsu’s shoulders, and every step she took was lethargic. Now that the adrenaline had fully worn off, Tsu was honestly a bit amazed that she was still awake; she would’ve expected Ochako to crash hard after losing as much blood as she had. Still, Ochako soldiered on, fueled by sheer will to stay awake.
Every so often, though, her eyes would flutter shut before she jolted awake. After one such jolt, she yawned and spoke. “Hey, Bakugo, how much further’ve we gotta go?”
“Another kilometer or so, probably,” he said with a shrug. “What, you weaklings can’t keep up?”
Ochako grumbled in response and let loose a line of creative cusses under her breath that, frankly, left Tsu with quite a few questions on how she came up with them.
Before she could do much internal debating on whether or not to ask, though, a low growl rumbled out around the group. Immediately, progress stalled and everyone whipped their heads around looking for the source.
Tsu caught sight of it and paled. There, hidden in the trees, was a pair of glowing green eyes. As it got closer, Tsu saw what it was first, her excellent night vision paying off.
It was wolf-shaped, complete with a snarling snout and sharp claws. It stalked forwards, its mouth dripping as it prepared to pounce on its new prey. Taking a very quick glance around, Tsu saw Bakugo, Todoroki, and Tokoyami preparing to fight as three more of the creatures closed in on them. Ochako was wide awake by now, and Ida and Shoji had huddled closer together, looking out into the woods with narrowed eyes. Clearly, just like wolves, these creatures were pack hunters.
Tsu looked back at the creature, this time noting what made it quite unique compared to Earth’s wolves. The most obvious difference was that it was made entirely of wood, seeming to be a cobbled together amalgamation of sticks, branches, and leaves. In place of saliva, sap dripped from its wooden teeth, and rattling noises rang out with every step it took.
For a tense moment, everything was silent.
And then all hell broke loose as the wolves pounced.
Immediately, Tsu shoved Ochako into Shoji’s arms as she jumped, the wolf’s jaws clamping shut where she had been mere moments before. While she was in the air, she heard an explosion from Bakugo and the crackling of Todoroki’s fire, along with what she hoped was Dark Shadow slamming the fourth wolf into the ground.
But Tsu didn’t have time to look as she fell back down to the ground, one leg extended to kick the wolf directly in the back. She heard snapping as the strike connected and her leg went cleanly through the wolf, throwing off her predictions as she found herself suddenly riding the creature with her left leg while her right was embedded in its back. Reacting quickly, though, Tsu shot her tongue out at the creature’s head, wincing as it aggravated the knife wound. It proved to be worth it however, more snapping sounds signifying the creature’s decapitation—her tongue packed enough force behind it for the blunt trauma to the back of the wolf’s head to separate it from the body.
Tsu braced her left leg against the ground as the wolf’s legs collapsed, looking around as she wrenched her right leg from the creature’s body. True to her thoughts, Dark Shadow had completely pulverized the wolf that had been behind them, while Bakugo’s had been reduced to sticks and spread everywhere and a pile of ash was all that was left of Todoroki’s wolf. With her leg freed, Tsu made her way back to her injured classmates, once again helping Ochako stay upright.
Bakugo laughed, and in Tsu’s opinion it sounded rather deranged. “Hell yeah! No shitty wolf is standing up to the future number one!”
“I will admit,” Tokoyami said as Dark Shadow retreated inside of him, “that was rather anticlimactic.”
Shoji shot him a glare. “Well, now you’ve jinxed it.”
“I doubt that superstition will come into play,” Ida mentioned. “After all, it seems unlikely that-”
Ochako cut him off. “Hey, is it the exhaustion talking, or are the sticks floating for you guys too?”
True enough, many of the sticks that had been strewn around them from Bakugo’s explosions were floating with a green glow. Collectively, they shot off into the woods behind them, before beginning to coalesce into another, larger wolf. Panicked, Tsu quickly looked back to where she’d dealt with her own wolf, and her eyes widened as she saw that it had reformed as well. Still snarling, still dripping sap, and importantly, still ready to pounce.
And she didn’t have time to dodge this time.
All Tsu could do was shove Ochako to the ground to get her out of the way, but her positioning dragged Tsu down with her. Panicking, Tsu thrust her left arm out to try and do something, and screamed in pain when the wolf bit down on it.
Thankfully, whatever this was wasn’t strong enough to break bone and the bite missed her arteries, but that didn’t make it hurt any less. Reflexively lashing out, she scored a kick to one of the wolf’s legs and punched it directly in the snout with her other arm, but both failed to get it to let go.
What did get it to relinquish its hold on her arm was the veritable swarm of arms that came from Shoji. He grunted as two of his extended hands found purchase on the wolf’s snout, wrenching it open and freeing Tsu. Simultaneously, a third hand punched straight into the wolf’s neck, decapitating it once again.
He didn’t stop there, though. His duplicated arms continued across the wolf’s torso, ripping it stick from stick. Unfortunately, that just gave the giant wolf behind them more material, but Tsu had stopped paying attention to that as she clamped down on the wound with her right hand to try and stem the bleeding.
Ochako was at her side in an instant, frantically trying to rip off a piece of her T-shirt to wrap around Tsu’s arm. “Shit,” she swore as her fingers slipped and she failed to get the right purchase to actually rip the fabric.
Thankfully, she wouldn’t need to, as once Shoji was done with the wolf he reached over to put pressure on the wound. “Uraraka,” he said, “if you float her and yourself I can carry both of you and keep pressure on the bite.”
A determined look came over Ochako’s face as she nodded. She went green as she negated both her and Tsu’s gravity, but managed to keep it in—apparently the nausea training at camp had paid off.
As soon as they were secure, with Shoji keeping pressure on the wound with two of his arms and carrying Tsu with the third on that side of his body, Ochako shouted. “Tsu’s injured! We need to move now!”
Bakugo, predictably, instead charged directly at the newly formed giant wolf, and Tsu could clearly see him fly towards it as she looked over Shoji’s shoulder. “I’m not backing down from a fight!”
He got up near the wolf’s head and unleashed a massive explosion, sending sticks everywhere. Said sticks just as quickly launched themselves back into the wolf, and the only thing that saved Bakugo from literally having his head bitten off was Dark Shadow springing out to grab him and pull him back.
“You owe me and Fumi one,” she said.
“Todoroki!” Tokoyami called out as he ran back to the group, Bakugo still in Dark Shadow’s grasp.
Todoroki stepped forward and unleashed a giant column of flame from his left side, almost completely enveloping the wolf. For a moment, they waited with bated breath, hoping that this would be enough to kill the creature for good.
Panting slightly, Todoroki let up on the flame, only to reveal that the wolf had coated itself in sap, which, while it was smoking slightly, had prevented it from burning to a crisp. Even those parts of it which had burnt away were quickly reforming, dragging random sticks from around the forest and even ripping a live branch off of a tree.
“Its sap must be fire retardant,” Todoroki noted. Switching strategies, he planted his right foot securely on the ground and recreated his Sports Festival fight against Sero.
In an instant, a massive glacier had sprung into existence, trapping the wolf inside. Tsu shivered, even with Shoji’s body warmth there to help, and there was a flicker of flame from Todoroki’s left side as he warmed himself up after that attack.
“I don’t know if that’ll hold it,” he said. “Like Uraraka said, we need to move now.”
The ice cracked, and everyone agreed. Except for Bakugo, but he was outvoted and even he wasn’t so blinded by his ego to throw his life away over this.
They’d gotten a bit over a hundred meters away when they heard the glacier shatter, and the wolf let out a bone-chilling howl. Bakugo growled as he whirled around. “Four Eyes, Arms, you’ve got our wounded. Make a run for it while the rest of us hold it off. We’ll catch up later.”
“I cannot justify simply leaving you all agai-”
“Ida, I love you like a brother, but if you don’t get to that damn castle before Deku’s splints melt I will throw you into the sun!”
Ida seemed to have a mental debate with himself at Ochako’s declaration, but he quickly relented. He and Shoji gave Bakugo, Todoroki, and Tokoyami a parting nod before turning around and revving [Engine].
The next five minutes were a blur for Tsu as she barely fought off unconsciousness, both from exhaustion and the fact that her left arm was still in a lot of pain. Occasionally, they would hear an explosion rock the forest, or hear Dark Shadow’s bestial roar, or see the tips of Todoroki’s ice attacks.
Before long, though, they broke out of the trees and into a giant clearing, and Tsu grinned as she looked in front of them and saw the castle they were gunning for. Granted, it didn’t look inhabited. Many of the towers were collapsed and several walls had caved in, but the stone structure was still shelter.
Unfortunately, it was on the other side of a chasm.
“Damn,” Shoji said. “Uraraka, you awake?”
Ochako shot him a death glare. “I’m barely holding it together as is, I can’t float all of us across.”
“Todoroki should be able to make us a bridge!” Ida mentioned.
“Great, kero, we need one of the ones we left behind,” Tsu deadpanned.
Ida frowned, looking down at Midoriya in his arms. “Shoji, could you-”
“I can’t carry him, too,” Shoji said. “All five of my working arms are occupied.”
Ida grumbled. “I suppose we have to wait, then.”
As if fate was toying with them (and with the day they’d had, Tsu couldn’t really rule that out), a haggard-looking Todoroki, Bakugo, and Tokoyami stumbled out of the trees. Bakugo immediately fixed the group with a glare. “The fuck are you extras standing around for?”
“Todoroki! Bridge!” Ochako shouted, at this point seemingly giving up on using enough energy to form complete sentences.
At least Todoroki seemed like he got what he needed to do, as he ran up to the chasm’s edge and stomped down his right foot, connecting the two cliffs with an ice bridge. Ida, Shoji, and their passengers were the first to cross, followed by Tokoyami, then Bakugo, and finally Todoroki. Just as he made it to the opposite cliff, the wolf charged out of the trees towards them.
At this point, the thing was massive and barely even looked like a wolf anymore. It seemed to have an entire tree—albeit a small one—for one of its legs, even. Its howl rattled everyone there down to their very bones, and it charged forward, right for the bridge that Todoroki had made.
Acting quickly, Todoroki slammed his left hand down onto their side of the bridge, rapidly melting through it and weakening the ice. The wolf only made it a quarter of the way across before the bridge shattered underneath it, and it made one last yelp before it plunged into the foggy depths below.
Ten seconds later, they heard a massive crashing and shattering sound as thousands of sticks, branches, and even a few entire trunks hit the ground and the wolf creature was claimed by the forest’s night.
After a tense moment to see if the thing would reform again and somehow climb the side to kill them, everyone finally relaxed. It wasn’t getting back up.
“Well,” Tsu noted, “that was terrifying, kero.”
“Heh, wolf shit couldn’t hold a candle to me!” Bakugo said, his bravado instantly returning now that they weren’t in a life-or-death situation.
Choosing to ignore him, the rest of them turned to the castle. “Well, I suppose for now we should set up camp for the night in there,” Ida said. “We’ll need a makeshift infirmary for Midoriya, Uraraka, and Tsu.”
“‘M fine,” Ochako sleepily complained, having her second adrenaline crash in the same night. “Just tired.”
Shoji nodded at him regardless. “Tomorrow, we should try and find a river. Todoroki can boil any water we collect to get rid of bacteria.”
Ochako suddenly found a bit more wakefulness. “Shit. We’re on another planet. We don’t have any immunity to their diseases and I don’t wanna go out like the Martians did in War of the Worlds.”
Todoroki carefully considered that. “I will be extra sure to boil any water we find before it’s drunk.”
“When the light arrives to chase away the darkness, we shall further our quest,” Tokoyami said. “For now, we rest.”
Dark Shadow rolled her eyes as well as a shadow demon could at his theatrics.
Carefully, the group stepped into the castle through one of the broken walls. Had Tsu been more awake, she would have taken the time to admire the stonework and the iconography adorning many of the walls, but right now she was just about ready to collapse and sleep for a week.
Thirty minutes later, with her wound bandaged and laying on what was left of some sort of tapestry, however, her thoughts turned in a direction that sent Tsu sitting bolt upright.
“We weren’t the only ones in that portal, kero.”
Tokoyami, who had agreed to take the first watch—who knew what creatures might be lurking around in the castle—looked back at her with wide eyes. A grimace formed around his beak as Dark Shadow popped out to vocalize the question they all had.
“Where the hell is the League?”
“Where the hell are we, Kurogiri?”
“I am unaware of our current location, Dabi.”
“Yeah, well, your coordinates for the bar opened to the middle of the fucking ocean, so we better figure it out quick.”
“Gentlemen, please, I am certain we can resolve this civilly.”
“Shut the fuck up, Compress.”
“Oh, what if we’re in the Sahara! We’re in another universe, moron.”
Toga Himiko giggled to herself as her companions shouted at each other. Sure, it was weird that whatever Ochako-chan had done had sent Kurogiri to this desert, but today was still great! She got to meet Tsu-chan and Ochako-chan and Izuku-kun and all of them had such pretty blood. She shivered at the thought of finally breaking open the syringe she had of Ochako-chan’s blood and getting to taste it.
Currently, they had just come upon a city. Despite it being nighttime, there was still a bunch of hustle and bustle in the local marketplace, but based on the number of stalls it was probably much busier during the day. Himiko bounced on the balls of her feet as she got a good look at the inhabitants.
Huh, that was a lot of heteromorphs. And a lot of them were similar to each other, maybe there was a family reunion going on? Idly, Himiko was wondering how they’d look covered in blood when a thought crossed her mind. Most heteromorph families still had distinct members, and there were only three or so different species involved!
Hmm, maybe Twice’s alternate universe idea was spot-on.
Suddenly, Himiko gasped as she caught sight of an anthropomorphic cat. He had mostly brown fur with some white accents, along with a shock of purple fur between his ears, but what caught Himiko’s attention was his coat. Particularly the color. It was a beautiful blood red, and she wondered how his blood would taste.
He was wandering between stalls, chatting up the people running them, when his green eyes centered on the group of humans. “Hey, everyone!” Himiko gleefully shouted, snapping the rest of their attention to her and interrupting the latest argument between Dabi and Compress. “The cat’s coming to talk to us!”
Dabi rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but wherever here is, I don't think they speak Japanese.”
A deep chuckle from the approaching figure cut off any retort. “Well, I’d hope that harmony magic keeps the translations running!” The cat grinned. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen any of your species before, though. The name’s Capper.” He bowed extravagantly, and Himiko swore she could feel Compress judging a fellow showman. “Welcome to Klugetown. What can I do you for?”
