Chapter Text
Izuku sighs as he sits down, tuning out Iidas complaints about the lack of seating plans on the bus ruining his own. He knows he should feel some guilt over tuning out one of his few friends, but he can’t help it. Ever since awakening One For All during the entrance exam two months ago, he felt a draw of some sort; as if someone—something—were calling out to him.
He turns to look behind him, pulling a leg onto the seat as he watches the trees speed past them. Somebody is screeching about something from across the bus, but he doesn’t pay it any mind.
What is it? Who is calling out to him?
This feeling had Izuku on edge for the first couple of weeks after the exam— the feeling of barely hearing his name being called from behind him. When he would turn around, though, there was no sign of anybody trying to get his attention.
As his gaze drifts up to the sky, he thinks back to his conversation with All Might about it.
“It’s like somebody is yelling my name at me, but they’re so far away all I can hear is a whisper,” Izuku says, trying to determine if his explanation makes any sense to the pro hero who gave him his Quirk.
All Might hums in response as he leans on the railing overlooking Dagobah Beach. “I can’t say I ever experienced anything like that with the Quirk, my boy.”
Izuku sighs in defeat, turning to watch the setting sun ripple across the water as it crashes against the clean beach.
“I was afraid you wouldn't know… Am I just imagining it?”
“You may be,” All Might admits, “but, knowing you as I do, I don’t believe you are.”
“Really?!” Izuku whips around to his mentor so sharply that he nearly startles the man.
“Indeed!” All Might laughs heartily. The laugh doesn’t last terribly long however, as it quickly turns into a coughing fit.
“Are you okay?!” Izuku frantically flits around him to try and help. All Might merely waves him off.
“Thank you, my boy. I will be fine.”
At Izuku’s sigh of relief, All Might returns to his position on the railing. The two stand in a comfortable silence, watching waves lap against the shore.
“I was wondering,” All Might says after a few minutes, “you mentioned feeling like something was drawing you somewhere, yes?”
“I did.” Izuku glances over at his mentor, slight confusion fluttering across his face.
“Do you know where this feeling is coming from?”
“I think I do—”
“Midoriya-kun, are you okay?”
The voice, combined with a hand waving in front of his face, pulls Izuku out of the memory. Following the hand to its owner, he finds Asui looking at him with concern.
“Y-yes,” Izuku answers quickly, “I’m okay. I was just lost in thought.”
“Midoriya-kun!” Iida calls out with a sense of urgency. “Please get your shoe off of the seat! It is incredibly disrespectful to every one of our predecessors at this school!”
Following his classmate’s gaze, Izuku finds that his shoe is indeed on the seat. He mutters an apology to Iida, quickly pulling his foot back to the floor.
“We’re here, stop messing around.” Aizawa calls out from the front of the bus, effectively stopping any conversation.
The bus soon stops and the students file out and line up beside it. Standing in front of them is a pro hero wearing a very fluffy-looking space suit.
“Hello, everyone,” the hero greets, her voice oddly clear despite the black visor hiding her face. “I’ve been waiting for you!”
“Ohmygosh!” Uraraka grabs one of Izuku’s arms and starts shaking it like a kid in a candy store. “It’s Thirteen! She’s my favorite hero!”
“Come on!” Thirteen continues. “Let’s show you guys what’s inside.”
She opens the massive doors behind her and has the students follow her in. Inside, they find an expansive area containing a large water slide leading into a lake, a ruined city, a mountain, and multiple massive domes painted various colors, all under an enormous glass dome.
“Holy crap!” Kirishima exclaims. “It looks like some kind of amusement park!”
“I created this facility to prepare you for different types of disasters,” Thirteen explains, holding her arms out towards the building. “Here, we have multiple zones built specifically to teach you how to deal with various disasters. There is the Flood Zone where you will learn water rescue, the Ruin Zone where we will cover how to safely move around in ruined cities, the Landslide Zone where you will learn all about landslide rescues, the Mountain Zone for learning how to perform search and rescue operations, the Conflagration Zone for learning how to fight intense fires, and the Storm Zone where we cover intense rainstorms. I call it the Unforeseen Simulation Joint!”
“Or you can just call it the USJ,” Aizawa adds, slurping on a jelly drink pouch of some kind before turning to Thirteen. “Shouldn’t All Might be here already?”
Izuku can’t quite hear her response, but the three fingers the hero holds up are enough for him to figure it out: All Might used up all of his time already.
He’s out of power.
Izuku sighs to himself, barely resisting the urge to drag a palm down his face. All Might will never change, it seems. But maybe that’s not a bad thing, he muses. After all, that is a big reason why he looks up to the hero so much.
“Ah well,” Aizawa starts, “the clock’s ticking. We should get started.”
As soon as the words leave his mouth, the lights in the facility flicker and the fountain in the center plaza starts sputtering. Just as soon as these oddities start, however, they end. For a moment, everyone is confused and muttering to each other.
As this happens, Izuku hears that strange voice calling his name again. Only this time, instead of just the usual draw to some place far away, he feels this sense of foreboding. Like something is about to go horribly wrong and change everything he knows.
But a swirl of purple gradually growing at the center fountain draws away his attention. Izuku peers at the swirl in confusion as it continues to grow, and grow, and grow, until it is an eye-wateringly massive portal.
Then, hordes of people begin strolling out of it.
Izuku’s eyes shoot open. Shivers crawl numbly beneath his gym uniform.
“Wait, has the training started already?” Kirishima squints to better see the newcomers. “I thought we were gonna be rescuing people.”
Izuku only shakes his head. Even though it’s difficult to tell for certain with the distance, his instincts press him to recognize that these people were, if anything, villains.
“Stay back! Those are real villains!” Aizawa barks at the students as he pulls his goggles up onto his face. “Thirteen, get the students out of here and alert the main campus!”
“Got it!” Thirteen responds as Aizawa hurls himself down the stairs, using his capture scarf to swing and gain speed as she turns to Class 1A. “Get to the doors!”
As Thirteen ushers the students to the exit—keeping herself between them and the villains, Izuku notes—Yaoyorozu asks something that is on everybody’s mind.
“Why aren’t the alarms going off?” She whips her head around to the glass dome above, their silence pressing in on them. “Did they compromise the security of the area, too?”
“That’s really bad… Especially with how many of those guys there are.” Kirishima casts a look back to where Aizawa had flown off with gnashed teeth. “There’s gotta be something we can do!”
“I know you want to help as heroes, but you’re still in training! The sooner you’re all safe, the less your teacher will have to worry about you all,” Thirteen says, fast and stern as she finishes her head count. “Everyone, head towards the doors!”
“But if even the alarms are compromised, they might have jammed communications, too.” Todoroki swings around to Thirteen, urgent in his reasoning. “We’re a single class with only Eraserhead and you here, far away from campus. They must have planned this in advance to cut us off from help arriving.”
Thirteen beholds Todoroki in shock. Then, in the face of his bold voice and focused gaze, she lets out a relenting, proud sigh.
“All right!” She speaks up, looking over the student heroes who faced her eagerly. “The roster said that one of you has an electricity quirk. Kaminari! Are you here?”
“Here!” Kaminari rushes to the front of the group, a tremor to his voice but his fists balled tight. “What do you need?”
“I need you to use your Quirk and equipment to get a signal to UA’s campus.” She taps at the side of her helmet, indicating Kaminari’s headset. “We need to raise the alarm so the school knows to come find us.”
“I-I’m not sure it’ll work,” he replies, raising a hand to the large headset on his ear, “but I’ll try.”
“Thank you.” With a nod, Thirteen turnsto the rest of 1A. “Everyone, keep moving towards the exit!”
As Izuku retreats back to the doors, he can’t help but chew his lip while looking back to Aizawa. This fight is seriously stacked against him. He’s best with stealth and one-on-one fights. Long, drawn out fights will only serve to tire him out.
“Concerned for your teacher?” Thirteen’s helmet enters Izuku’s vision as one of her hands presses against his upper back, urging him forward. At his nod, she continues. “I’m sure he’d appreciate it, even if he refuses to let you guys know that he actually has a heart. Knowing my senpai, he’d probably say something about ‘no hero being a one-trick pony’.”
“Something’s there…!” he cries out.
The moment he thinks to put up his fists, Thirteen is already between the cloud and the students.
“Now where do you think you are going, you golden eggs?” a deep, rumbling voice calls from the cloud as two sharp, glowing yellow eyes appear towards the top. “I know it’s impolite, but we, the League of Villains, have decided to invite ourselves into this haven of justice to say hello. Besides, isn’t this a fitting place for the Symbol of Peace to take his last breath?”
Izuku nearly chokes on his own tongue at that. They’re here to… kill All Might? Is that really their goal?
With his presence of mind slipping, he barely notices Thirteen popping open a cap over one of her fingers.
“I believe he was supposed to be here today, and yet he is nowhere to be seen,” the cloud continues. “Tell me, has there been a change in plans?”
Only icy and cowed stares meet the question in response. The cloud—the villain—lets out a chuckle that deeply unnerves Izuku.
“Well,” the villain continues languidly, “I suppose it doesn’t matter in the end.”
The clouds enveloping the villain start to expand, almost as if they were a massive blanket draped over somebody holding their arms out for a hug. A lure for a straight-jacket in the waiting.
As soon as Thirteen points her open-capped finger at the villain, an explosion spewing dirt from the ground covers him whole.
The class covers their eyes from he heat and smoke billowing over them. By the time the dust settles, the scene shows Thirteen not having activated her Quirk at all. But now, between her and the unfazed villain stands where the plumes of destruction came from: Bakugou and Kirishima.
“You seriously thought we’d stand around and let your dumb ass yap our ears off?” Sparks from Bakugou’s palms pierce through the fading smoke, his sneer broad as Kirishima stands battle-ready next to him, his arms hardened into rocky spikes.
“You live up to your school’s reputation,” the villain chuckles again, the sound lighter but no less unnerving. “If a bit crass.”
The smoke clears in a flash of purple. Through the lingering dust, Izuku can see the villain reform itself. Curiously, there is what appears to be a metal brace of some sort underneath the eyes. Could it be some kind of weak point?
“But,” the villain continues, voice gaining a hard edge, “you should be more careful, children. Somebody might get hurt. But let me take you to my allies who all await you across this facility, where you will meet your doom!”
With that, there is another explosion, but this one is of a purple mist roaring out from the villain. Izuku finds himself being buffeted by the purple mist before he quickly finds himself losing his footing and falling.
And falling.
And falling…
Shouldn’t he have hit the ground by now?
With that thought, he opens his eyes and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Far below him is a lake with a boat on it.
Looking around, he sees that he’s still in the USJ. This must be the Flood Zone that Thirteen was talking about earlier.
No sooner has he realized this than he finds himself lurched down, sinking deep into the water.
Izuku gasps, breathing deeply as he is dragged out of the water. Looking up, he finds one of his classmates, Asui Tsuyu, pulling him onto the deck of the ship floating in the lake.
“Thanks for the save, Asui,” Izuku coughs out, water coming out along with the words.
“No worries,” she replies. “And I thought I told you to call me Tsu, ribbit.”
“Thanks a bunch, Tsu!” Mineta gasps out.
Iuku turns around, perplexed for an instant. His mind catches up to recognize that Mineta must have portalled to USJ’s Flood Zone as well. Now, Asui—no, Tsu—had thrown him onto the deck of th ship when she pulled both of the boys out of the water.
“No.” Tsu almost glares at the little pervert. “You call me Asui”.
“But—”
“So.” She turns to Izuku, ignoring Mineta’s whining over getting interrupted. “Any ideas on getting out of this mess?”
He takes a moment to peer over the boat’s railing, noting the line of villains stretching out to either side where they disappear behind the boat, presumably circling it.
Izuku hisses in a breath. They are effectively trapped on the boat—all of the villains seem to have water-based Quirks and could easily intercept anybody trying to sneak through. Even if they somehow got past the villains, they would still have to swim all the way to shore, which is not close by any means.
Beyond the shore, Izuku can see plumes of dust rising from the central plaza, but he brushes it off. That’s a problem for later, focus on getting off of this boat first.
“It’s no good… We’re surrounded.” Sitting back down, he turns to Tsu and shakes his head, mouth pressed into a thin line. “What are your Quirks?” he asks. “We might be able to figure something out if we know what we can each do.”
“That makes sense,” Tsu easily agrees. “My Quirk is Frog. Pretty self-explanatory. I can jump high and cling to pretty much any wall. My tongue can extend up to about 20 meters and I can grab things with it. I can also spit out my stomach to clean it, but I don’t see how that’s useful here. I can also make a toxic mucus that doesn’t really do much more than sting you.”
“Wow!” Izuku gushes. “I thought your Quirk was awesome already, but this is just incredible! Are you stuck with just one species or can you do any frog? There’s a species that can turn transparent, I wonder if you can—”
“Midoriya,” Tsu says. “Let’s get out of here first.”
“Yes, sorry,” Izuku apologizes. “What about you, Mineta?”
“How are you two so calm right now?!” the diminutive teen whisper-yells. “We’re about to die and neither of you are freaking out!”
Well… Survive now, panic later,” Izuku says. “That’s rule number one for making it through crises, right?”
Mineta continues to grumble, especially as Tsu nods in agreement. After some more prodding, he relents and shares his Quirk, pulling one of the purple balls that make up his hair off of his head.
“All I have are these sticky balls,” he says, another ball rapidly filling in where he had just plucked the one off of his head. “They stick to pretty much everything and stay there for a while. The better I’m feeling, the longer they stick. And they don’t stick to me—I just bounce right off of them.”
Izuku hums in thought. He had assumed as much about Mineta’s Quirk based off of the Quirk exam during the first day of school. Not how he thought he’d have his suspicions confirmed, but it was good to know.
“Then there’s my super strength,” Izuku adds. “But that still breaks my bones when I use it.” He had shattered an arm and both legs during the entrance exam fighting a massive robot. The memory alone makes him shudder. “So that's best left as a last resort.”
“This is taking too long!”
One of the villains yells out before a blade of water rises up and crashes back down onto the ship. With the hull sliced clean in half, the villain cacklesz at the panicked screams coming from the sinking boat.
“There,” the villain says with a growing sneer. “Now they can come to us.”
“I told you we were about to die!” Mineta screams at Izuku, tears and snot flying out of his face.
“Get a hold of yourself.” Tsu smacks their sniveling classmate on the back of the head before turning to Izuku. “It’s now or never. Got any ideas?”
“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” he starts in lieu of sharing a plan. “Why did they send you here, Tsu? If they knew you were a frog, they would have sent you to the Conflagration Zone. Dry you out with the fires in there.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, “I was thinking the same thing actually.”
“So, that means that they don’t know our Quirks,” Izuku continues, a smile spreading across his face. “We can take advantage of that.”
“Those brats haven’t stopped whining,” the shark villain complains. “Any way to speed up that boat sinking, Dizzy Man?”
“It’s Dozaemon, you imbecile!” he snaps at the shark. “And be patient. They’re stuck up there and it isn’t as if any of them can get us from here.”
“Can’t you jus—”
The shark villain is cut off by a yell from the boat.
Dozaemon looks up and sees a green-haired kid standing on the railing and yelling bloody murder. He barely has time to react to the sight before the kid jumps off of the boat, yelling “DIE!” and the water around him collapses inward as if some giant, invisible force hit the water. There’s more yelling above him, but he doesn’t pay it any mind as he focuses on trying to avoid getting sucked into the whirlpool that was formed because of the attack.
Then, as if he didn’t have enough to worry about, these weird purple balls start falling out of the sky. What the heck even are those things? Whatever they are, he knows he doesn’t want to touch them. But one of the other villains crashes into him, shoving him into a ball that attaches to his arm. On the verge of panicking, he swats it away, only for his hand to stick to the ball.
What the heck even is this thing?
Fully panicking now, he keeps pushing at the ball on his arm, hoping to get it off. He is interrupted in his attempts by another villain slamming into his back.
“What the hell are these things?!” the villain yells.
Dozaemon doesn’t have a chance to respond before another body slams into them. And another. And another. The purple demon balls have stuck onto all of them. Now completely unable to fight the water, the mass of villains gets pulled into the center of the whirlpool.
Just when they think their ordeal is over, however, the water snaps back up, sending them flying through the air.
When they land, they land on the ground next to the lake, still stuck together as a massive ball of villains.
“I knew we should have sunk that boat faster,” the shark-guy comments—only to get knocked out when Dozaemon throws his head back into the guy.
As the trio of students lands just shy of the shore, Izuku looks over the lake to where the villains landed. A sigh of relief leaves him, his heart thudding as he clutches the fingers he had broken when he used One For All to make that whirlpool.
“Die?” Tsu deadpans at Izuku. “Really?”
“It was the first thing I thought of,” Izuku sheepishly admits, rubbing the back of his head, wincing when he shifts his fingers in the process.
“Are you okay, Midoriya?” Tsu asks, concerned.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Let’s get go—”
Izuku cuts himself off, staring at a mass of green lightning forming over the lake.
Tsu turns to look at whatever it is, and after a moment, voices the question in Izuku’s mind: “What on Earth is that?”
When Izuku opens his mouth to answer her, the lightning dissipates.
Where the lightning fades, a blue figure is plummeting into the water.
“Not agaaaa—!”
The figure’s scream is cut short when it hits the water. Moments later, the figure resurfaces in flails and water-plugged screams, clearly panicking and unable to swim.
With one glance between Izuku and Tsu, they both jump in the water.
Mineta’s wailing to not leave him alone fades fast to the pool they plunge into. Underwater, Izuku grabs onto Tsu’s hand, ignoring the twinge from his two broken fingers, so they can get to the drowning newcomer faster.
In seconds, the blue figure comes into view. Their cheeks are puffed up and they seem to be trying to run? Do they not know how to swim? Either way, the figure isn’t doing more than flailing in place.
Izuku signals for Tsu to take them up to the surface. They’ll need her speed in the water if they want to save this person. Nodding, Tsu scoops the stranger into her arms and dashes up to the surface.
Izuku goes to follow her, but hesitates when a green glint catches his attention. There, settling on the lake bed, is a large, green gem.
A gem doesn’t seem like something Thirteen would put in her training course. So what is it?
Curious, he swims down to grab it. As he does so, that voice calls his name again. Except this time it isn’t from behind him—it’s coming from the gem. As he approaches the gem, the sensation gets louder, stronger, more clear.
In the back of his mind, he knows that he should be careful. But the relief of finally being able to figure out what’s been causing him so much grief for the last two months is enough for him to ignore that thought. When he gets close enough, he reaches out a hand towards the jewel.
As his fingers close around the gem, something changes immediately.
He feels stronger. Faster. His fingers don’t hurt as much as they did. Then, the voice calling for him vanishes. Instead, a satisfied rumble radiates deep under his skin. However, despite that, this new sensation still doesn’t feel complete.
Deciding that the gem should come with him, Izuku makes sure he has a good hold on it and swims back up. When he breaches the surface of the water, he realizes just how little air he still had in him his lungs practically begging him for mercy.
“Oh, thank goodness!” Mineta cries in relief. “I thought you would never come up!”
“You did spend longer than I thought you would down there,” Tsu agrees, concern laced in her voice. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Izuku gasps out, just barely getting his breathing back under control. He sets the gem on the ground in front of him. “I couldn’t tell you why, but I’m pretty sure this thing is important.”
A cough and gasp for air interrupts the conversation, drawing everybody’s attention to the soaked blue figure that Tsu pulled up.
It is here where Izuku realizes that this figure might not be human. They’re covered from head to toe in blue quills and are wearing nothing but gloves and a pair of shoes.
“W-Where am I?” the figure coughs out.
“You’re in the USJ,” Izuku says, holding a hand out.
“Thanks,” he says, taking the hand and pulling himself up. “Ignoring that I don’t know what a ‘USJ’ is, who are you guys?”
“I’m Midoriya Izuku, this is Asui Tsuyu, and that is Mineta Minoru,” Izuku says as he helps the figure to his feet. Once he’s standing up, Izuku realizes that he’s actually a little shorter than Mineta. He had realized that the stranger was small, but failed to realize just how small.
“Nice to meet ya!” the stranger says cheerily, striking a pose with one hand on his hip and the other pointing a thumb to his own chest. “I’m Sonic the Hedgehog, fastest thing alive. Now, can I have that Chaos Emerald back?”
Following Sonic’s outstretched finger, Izuku realizes that it’s the gem he’s asking for. For some reason, Izuku can’t help but feel that this gem really does belong with Sonic, so he hands it over. Maybe it was his smile? His cheery greeting?
“Thanks!” Sonic says as he accepts the Emerald.
“Midoriya!” Mineta calls out, face full of betrayal. “Why did you give him that? He could be a villain!”
At that, Sonic bursts out laughing.
“Me? That’s a shame! What do bad guys look like over here?” After calming down with a short breath, he smiles at the others. “I’m pretty sure I’m in another world right now. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that whenever I’m falling somewhere new, something’s gone wrong.” He crosses his arms. “So! What’s wrong?”
“Well…” Izuku rubs at the back of his head.
“We were on a school trip and we got attacked by a bunch of villains,” Tsu interjects. “We were working on making our way to the exit when you fell out of the sky.”
“I was also hoping to check on Aizawa-sensei on our way past,” Izuku agrees, pointing through the shrubbery near them to the central plaza with the fountain.
“Enough about that!” Mineta angrily interrupts, pointing at Sonic with a trembling hand. “Where did you come from? How did you get here? And don’t try any of that ‘I’m from another planet’ crap either. Everybody knows that aliens aren’t real.”
“Do they really? Where’s your sense of wonder?” Sonic retorts, grinning at Mineta. “Whether or not you believe me, I really am from another planet. Don’t know yet if that goes for the dimension I’m from, too. As for how…”
There’s a silence as Sonic looks down at the green gem in his hand.
“My best friend could tell you better than me.”