It was an accident, she swears. She didn't mean to hurt anyone, honest. All she wanted to do was scare the guy a bit. He was always picking on people and making things worse for everyone, and she was tired of standing idly by and letting it happen.
So she grabbed him, grabbed him one hand, and went up in the air. She could do that now, and she was gonna make the most out of it. She just wanted to make him pee his pants a little and apologize, and after that, she'd set him back down.
But then he started struggling, started squirming about out of fear. It made her get annoyed, so she started yelling at him. He didn't stop, so she hit him on the head, but it was too hard. She lost focus for just one second, and because of that, she let go of him.
He hit the ground. Hard. Too hard.
It was an accident, she swears.
There are many reasons for why it's ill-advised to get in a dogfight in the middle of the timestream. For starters, any problem you have with other people flying through the timestream should never escalate to violence, as that's just rude and childish. Second, if a time vortex opens up, you run the risk of a stray bullet accidentally killing Ben Savage before he could bless the world with Boy Meets World. But probably the most important reason is that if you have to get into a fight in the middle of the timestream at all, then it means you're in for a terrible time.
This was the case for the crew of the Waverider , who were in the midst of their own terrible time.
"Oh man, what a terrible time for us to be in the midst of!" one of the crew members shouted as the ship was hit with another laser blast.
"Stay calm everyone, we can get through this," said Captain Selene as a deflector shield blocked one of the attacks thrown their way.
"Easier said than done!" said another one of the crew members. She made a valid point about that. Fights in the timestream were never a straightforward affair, and their current opponent was bending it even more out of shape than normal.
"Hook me up with a timesuit, Gideon. I'm going out there to smash that asshole to bits!" another crew member shouted, pointing a mace at a cracked window.
"Are you—mmmmm—crazy? You got a—rrrrrrrrrrrr—death wish, Warhawk?" asked another crew member.
"I agree with that assessment, Mister Stewart," said Gideon, her hologram floating above Captain Selene. "The current battle is greatly destabilizing the degatons inside the timestream, and it has progressed to the point where the timesuit will be largely ineffective."
"Then what the hell do we do so he doesn't slag us?!" Warhawk asked.
"Only thing we can do: slag him before he slags us!" another crew member shouted.
"That's stupid, but not completely stupid," Captain Selene said. "Gideon, since we're close to our chronal designation point, we can expect time vortexes to the year 20XX, right?"
"Affirmative, Captain Wayne. By my estimates, the next time vortex should open in approximately fifty-two seconds," Gideon said.
"Just enough time, then. Increase power to the shields, charge the Bleed Busters, and head toward his port flank." Upon Captain Selene's command, the Waverider Mk. XVI flew down in the timestream on the southwest axis. All the lasers and gunships firing at them changed course, but the increased shielding was able to withstand the impact. Ever so slightly, though. They were still cracking against the might of their opponent's superior firepower, and if went on for too long, the shields would be completely destroyed.
It was fortunate then that they were still operational at the thirty second mark, which had them at the exact position they needed to be at with fully charged weaponry.
"Bleed Busters, fire!" The Promethium-lined yoctites of the Waverider Mk. XVI morphed into a massive cannon topside. Wasting no time at all, the cannon fired a dark red beam of energy through the air, passing by each and every individual degaton until it collided with the port side of the massive Skull Ship in front of them. The Bleed Buster tore through its construction to leave a massive hole that gave a perfect view from one side to the other. The lasers ceased and the gunships flew back to the Skull Ship and started melting into the holes for repairs. As all of that went on, the Skull Ship suddenly started becoming transparent until it completely vanished from sight.
Once all of that was done, Kurisu found herself finally breathing a sigh of relief. It felt like she was having mini strokes from the second they went up in the air, a weird feeling when she reminded herself that she could fly. Still, she wanted to be there. Of all the people on the Waverider Mk. XVI, she was the one who wanted to be there the most.
"We did it!" one of the crew members shouted. A second later, all of the lights shut off and the ship fell into a spiralling freefall. "We're gonna die!"
"Not yet," Captain Selene said. She pointed out the window, causing Kurisu's attention to be drawn to what was emerging in the timestream below them: a massive time vortex as black as night.
"Huh. Guess Gideon was telling the truth," Warhawk said.
"When—mrrrrrrr—has she ever been known to lie?" asked one of the crew members.
"Gideon, when does this time vortex put us?" asked one of the crew members.
"Approximately fifteen minutes before the enemy's reemergence," Gideon said.
"And we're gonna have to spend most of that time fixing the ship enough to get the cloaking tech up and running. Shit," Captain Selene said. "We're gonna be cutting it close, so as soon as we land in 20XX, everyone grabs a wrench and does what they can to bring this thing up to be a piece of crap, at best!"
"""Sir, yes sir!""" said multiple members of the crew, some more serious than others.
"Kurisu, I didn't hear anything from you."
"Aye aye, captain," Kurisu said with a bit of an eyeroll. That seemed to upset Captain Selene to a degree that she didn't feel like caring about, but nothing was said about it as they all fell into the time vortex.
Kurisu really hoped they would get there in time.
"Hey, did you hear that All Might joined The Terrifics?"
"No way, really?!"
"Yeah, and they just got in a fight with The Dreadfuls in the Mediterranean."
"That's awesome!"
"You think All Might's gonna be Number One soon?"
"Come on, he only just got to Number Five, and Wonder Woman's never even been challenged."
"You come on. Wonder Woman's super old now."
"She is a silver fox!"
"Deku, you wanna weigh in on this?" The question was directed to a meek-looking four-year-old boy with a freckled face and black hair that produced a small spitcurl. His name was Izuku Midoriya—commonly addressed by the slightly derogatory nickname "Deku"—and he was a boy who loved Heroes more than anyone.
"N-No, not really."
"Man, it's no fun talking to you about Hero stuff anymore," one of his classmates said with a frown.
An important aspect of one of the previous statements is "love" being in past tense. Midoriya loved Heroes to a degree that bordered on obsession, but for a while now, he had been doing his best to try and curb his enthusiasm and live as an ordinary and unsuspecting individual.
"I'm back, bitches!" The reason for this was connected to the white-haired boy who came barging into the classroom: his best friend, Katsuki Bakugou.
"Kacchan, you got your cast off!" said one of Midoriya's classmates. The words made Midoriya's body shake from recent remembrances.
"Man, I thought you'd never get better," Tsubasa said. Midoriya felt himself shaking even more.
"Get smarter, then," Bakugou said. This was hard for Midoriya, but it wasn't something he couldn't deal with. Bakugou had barely looked at him in months, so if that was maintained, then there wouldn't be a real issue.
"Deku!" Obviously that wouldn't be the case then, as evidenced by Bakugou stomping over to his desk. Midoriya did his best to not look him, but Bakugou also did his best to force the two of them to lock gazes with one another, so it became quite the annoying affair.
"K-K-Kacchan," Midoriya stammered out.
"You. Me. After school. Rematch. Got it?"
"Rematch? What, are you serious? You know you almost died, right?" one of their classmates asked.
"The keyword is 'almost,' asswipe!" With those words, the shaking from recent remembrances appeared to have hit their peak. Bakugou and the others laughed it off and pushed it aside as if it were nothing, but that didn't change the cruel reality Midoriya had to live with: that Bakugou almost died at his hand.
"I'm not gonna fight you, Kacchan," was what Midoriya said, it being the only thing he actually could say.
"Ex-fucking-scuse me?" Bakugou asked.
"I-I don't want to fight you, Kacchan, that's it." At that point, Midoriya had succeeded in not looking him in the eye.
"Man, the balls Deku has to stand up to Kacchan like that," one kid said. It wasn't like that at all, though.
"Kacchan's are bigger for actually wanting to fight him," another kid said. It shouldn't have been like that, though.
"Doesn't he know that no one's tougher than Deku? Why would he want to fight him again?" a third kid asked. It should have been obvious, though.
"It's like the guy wants to go back to the hospital," a fourth kid said with a laugh. A laugh that was joined by others. None of that was true, though.
"All of you shut your asses up, already!" Everyone stammered into a silence before Bakugou went over to Midoriya and grabbed him by his collar. "And you! What the hell are you playing at with this 'going out on top' bullshit?!" That wasn't true. He didn't want to go out on top. He didn't want to go out on anything. All he wanted was to not be able to hurt anyone, yet Bakugou wouldn't leave him alone because of whatever was going through his own head. "If you really wanna be a Hero, then you can't think for a second that it's okay to run from a fight!"
There it was. The inevitable.
"Speak up!" was what Bakugou shouted when Midoriya whispered his response.
"...don't want to…" Midoriya said, far louder than he would have liked.
"I said speak up!"
"I don't want to be a Hero anymore, so just leave me alone!" Midoriya cried, tears actually swelling up in his eyes.
In the immediate aftermath, Bakugou punched him in the face. Naturally, Bakugou was the only one hurt by that. Naturally, it made Midoriya feel sick.
A year had passed since that fateful day. Midoriya's life hadn't improved since then, nor had it worsened; it simply was what it was with no intention of changing on account of his lack of will to make it happen.
"Izuku, do you think you might want to come out today?" asked his mother, Inko. Lately, he had gotten into the habit of locking himself in room all day, but since he was hardly talking to people before, it was hard to see that as a turn for the worse.
"No," Midoriya stated. Every day his mother asked him that question, and every day he responded the same way. His father, on the rare occasions when he was home, would do the same, but the outcome was never different.
"O-Okay, that's—the festival! Right, there's a summer festival in a few days! That could be fun, right? Maybe fun enough to leave your room for?" Midoriya didn't answer. He didn't want to answer. "W-Well, I need to go out and run a few errands. Try and think about it while I'm gone, okay?"
Midoriya said nothing; he didn't want to say anything. Thankfully, his mother seemed to understand that and left without saying another word. He heard the door to the apartment shut and lock, so now he was completely alone. That was good. If all he could do was hurt people, then the best thing for everyone would be if he stayed by himself. He couldn't be a Hero, he couldn't be in the spotlight, he just needed to keep to himself as much as possible.
That was the only way for an alien to live in that world.
Some thirty minutes later, there was a knock at the door; Midoriya ignored it. A second later, it resurfaced; Midoriya ignored it. A second second later, it resurfaced with greater intensity. At that point, Midoriya realized that he couldn't keep ignoring it, so with moderate reluctance, he got out of bed, exited his room, and headed for the door.
I wonder who it is? Daddy's still in America, and Mommy never forgets her key, Midoriya thought. The knocking intensified even further, heavily increasing in volume and gaining a rather manic quality. Even if it was just an NHK subscription fee collector—which Inko had already paid last week—this kind of ferocious knocking had to be unwarranted, it just had to be. Midoriya pushed a step stool in front of the door and climbed up it to be eye level with the peephole.
"H-Hello?" Midoriya asked. He peered through the peephole and saw a seemingly ordinary man. Bald head, short beard, light purple skin, nothing about him stood out in a physical sense. He seemed like an ordinary man, yet he still knocked on the door with tremendous fury. "I-I'm sorry, who are you?"
The purple man locked eyes with Midoriya, locked tiny emotionless eyes with him, and ceased his knocking. Midoriya still had no idea who he was or what he wanted, but if he was done knocking, then it was probably nothing. He was probably a friend of another tenant and got the wrong apartment, only realizing that fact after he heard Midoriya's voice. That made sense, and because of that, he was going to leave and Midoriya could go back to his room.
One of his arms shot through the door.
"Huh?" The other arm followed suit. "Huh?" Both arms moved towards the left and, in one single motion, tore the door off of its hinges and threw it aside, a part of the neighboring wall coming along with it. "Huh?!"
"You made this too difficult a task, Kal-El," the purple man said, calling him by a name he had never heard before. There was a weird tone to his voice, almost robotic, almost inhuman. "You were to simply open the door and allow me to eliminate you the second I made visual contact, but you chose not to comply with that. Now I have been forced to make a mess of things, regardless of how unfunctional that may be. Regardless, you shall now perish."
It only made sense that Midoriya's immediate instinct was to run away. He jumped off the step stool with enough force to crack the floor beneath his feet and put all of his tremendous strength into his legs to try and hide in his room, but before he could even turn around, the purple man hand pinned him to the floor with a single arm. It was one unsuspecting arm, yet Midoriya found himself unable to move it a single centimeter.
"Look at you, Kal-El. So weak." The man lifted him up off the ground. "So fragile." Metallic tentacles sprouted out of the purple man's back and entangled themselves around his limbs and mouth, the last one silencing his cries. "So desperate. My calculations were correct when they predicted this to be your most vulnerable time period. Killing you will take nary a millisecond."
The skin on the purple man's forehead folded back to reveal a symbol: three circles joined together by thick lines to form a triangular shape. They glowed an eerie green that got darker as the tentacles formed a tighter and tighter grip around Midoriya's body. The purple man's mouth clamped up tight, his expression becoming even colder than before.
For the first time since his alien powers emerged, Midoriya couldn't overpower something thrown his way. His mouth felt like a balloon being forced to let out all of its air; his body felt like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed with extreme pressure to force out the very last drop. Midoriya was only five, yet he had to experience the sensation of having the life squeezed out of you. A cruel sensation for a child to experience as their last sensation.
That would only be the case, of course, without any sort of outside interference, and outside interference was exactly what arrived. Just as the last ounce of hope left Midoriya's body, a large force came barrelling into the apartment. Midoriya initially thought that it was All Might or Endeavor on account of the silhouette having a large and muscular frame, but there were several things that made him realize that that wasn't the case.
"Gorilla Knee!" That was the first one: an attack name that was in neither of their dictionaries. Said attack came about from the large bodied silhouette running across the street below and jumping who knew how many meters to knee the purple man in the square of his back. The force of the impact was apparently enough to make the purple man loosen his tentacles, resulting in Midoriya falling to the floor.
"You are—"
"Gorilla Punch!" The large bodied silhouette cut off the purple man with a tremendous punch that Midoriya barely caught sight of as he gasped for air; judging by the size of the sound of impact, however, he probably flew far and hard. "I gotcha kid."
The large bodied man picked Midoriya up in his arms just as the life started to return to him. As it did, Midoriya caught sight of the second thing to make him realize that this was neither All Might nor Endeavor: this man had the body of a gorilla. A gorilla as large and black as Gorilla Grodd, and for some reason, said body was dressed in what appeared to be a tight Robin uniform that was a multitude of sizes too small. It was very gross to look at, so Midoriya forced himself to look elsewhere.
That course of action brought Midoriya to the third thing to make him realize that it was neither All Might nor Endeavor: on top of the body was a glass jar filled with water that showcased a terribly familiar starfish-like being.
Midoriya screamed at the sight of the miniature Starro the Conqueror.
"Something on my face?" Starro asked, putting a paw across the jar encasing him. As he did that, Midoriya—still screaming—tried to break free of his grip, but to his surprise, it was far too tight. "Oh, wait, it's the whole, 'evil alien overlord in a glass jar' thing, isn't it? Come on, man, no one likes having their Twitter history brought up!"
Before anything else could be said, the purple man had gotten back up and fired its tentacles at Starro. Starro did his best to defend with just one arm, but the impact still pushed him back and accidentally forced Midoriya into the air, allowing the purple man to send another tentacle at him while he was defenseless. Said tentacle never hit him, though, as he was suddenly pulled away by something white and sticky until he was caught by someone.
"See, this is why we told you not to run ahead, Jarro." The person speaking was the one who caught him: a young sounding woman who had the sticky substance shooting out of her wrist; somehow, she was able to cling to the ceiling of the apartment like a spider. She was dressed in a skintight bodysuit that was white from her head to the top half of her chest—arms included—but red everywhere below that. Her face was draped in a white mask that kept the back of her head open, allowing for long golden hair to spill out in an incomprehensible braid, and etched into her cheeks was the image of what appeared to be ram horns.
"Gordium, we're in the field, remember? We have to stick to codenames, so you gotta call me Robin."
"We have all collectively still not agreed to that," Gordium said. At some point, she had ended up tying Midoriya up in some sort of cocoon made from the sticky white substance and sticking him onto her back. Midoriya would have complained, but he was still freaking out over the sight of Starro—or Jarro, as it were. Not only that, but the purple man was now shooting what appeared to be green blasts of energy from his fists at Gordium and Jarro, and as she dodged the attacks, he was glad that that also resulted in him not getting hit.
"Your resistance is meaningless. You will not be able to protect Kal-El," the purple man said as Gordium and Jarro dodged more energy blasts.
"Really? Seems like we're doing a pretty good job of it, but maybe that's just me," Gordium said. She fired twin blasts of the white and sticky substance at the purple man and pulled him into the air. When he was off the ground, Gordium disconnected the attack and Jarro jumped up and hit the purple man with a drop kick that sent him careening towards the floor.
The purple man never hit the floor, though. At that moment, three new people came crashing in through the ceiling: a man with large wings dressed in silver armor and holding a mace; a blue-haired boy dressed in rags with a strange-looking mask fixed atop his head and a red bangle on his right wrist; and someone whose head was a tiny volcano and was wearing what appeared to be a Green Lantern uniform.
As soon as the three of them appeared, the man in armor had his mace propped up like a baseball bat; the boy in rags had his bangle transform into a gauntlet and a black spear with a three-pronged energy tip; the Green Lantern made a construct in the shape of a pile bunker. With perfect synchronicity, they swung their weapons at the purple man and each hit him square in the back and sent him flying at a diagonal angle. His body created a massive hole in the ceiling when he collided with it, and in a few seconds, he was out of sight.
That didn't stop Midoriya from screaming, however.
"Hey, I'm no good with kids, so can someone take care of this?" Gordium asked as she jumped down onto the floor with the grace of a ballerina.
"I'm on it," Jarro said.
"You're the reason he's doing this in the first place." Midoriya kept screaming.
"Shut the hell up, brat!" shouted the man in armor. Midoriya kept screaming.
"Okay, I didn't think I had to clarify that I meant anyone except you, Warhawk, but there it is," Gordium said.
"What'd you say, you little—"
"What in the actual hell is going on here?" Midoriya—still screaming—turned in tandem with the rest of the strange people who were destroying his home to see a red-haired woman floating outside where the door used to be. Her body was covered in a black bodysuit with a cape, gloves, boots and utility belt all colored a dark purple; the few patches of skin that were visible—her stomach and face aside from her eyes—showed that her skin had a slight orange tint to it, though it didn't appear to be from a tan. What really caught Midoriya's attention—just barely enough to get him to quiet down, but not enough to calm him down—was how her mask was shaped like a bat and how her chest was adorned with a dark purple bat symbol.
"Well, the little guy stopped screaming, so nothing now, Batgirl," said the boy in rags, his gauntlet and spear turning back into a bangle. He called her Batgirl. How? Why? There hadn't been a Batgirl since the brief period of time when James Gordon was Batman, so it didn't make sense for this woman to be addressed as such.
"Goddammit," Batgirl said. "Getting here late was one thing, but did you people really have to traumatize the kid?"
"It was just a little traumatization," Jarro said.
"And it—rrrrrrrrr—was mostly brought about by—mmmmmm—you," said the Green Lantern with the volcano head. Batgirl just sighed.
"We don't have time for this; Gideon lost track of Joubu, so there's no telling when he'll show up again," Batgirl said. "We need to get Izuku back to the Waverider. As for this? I don't know; Jarro, just leave a note or something."
"It's Robin, and righty-o, sis," Jarro said.
"And stop. Calling. Me. That." The six of them, with Midoriya still on Gordium's back, left the destroyed mess that used to be Midoriya's apartment. The last few minutes had been nothing but one insane event after, and as he was being carried off to who knew where, Midoriya could only bring himself to ask a single question: "What's happening?"
"You're being rescued. Please—drrrrrrr—do not resist," said the Green Lantern with the volcano head. Midoriya wanted to scream again, but he had no screams left within him; there were only questions still rattling around inside his body.
The most pressing one being the following: what was his mom going to do when she saw what happened?
After spending some time flying around out of sight, Midoriya was eventually dragged to the Roshiyua Forest. The trees there were the tallest and thickest in all of Japan, and they all came together to make one of the densest forest in the country; a negative part of Midoriya's mind told him that it would be the perfect place to hide a dead body.
Midoriya ended up being dragged into a surprisingly spacious part of the Roshiyua Forest, not a single tree standing within a sixty meter diameter. The only thing present was a teenage girl who was dressed in a tracksuit with faded colors—colors that he liked—and long red hair that was cascading her back. She stared at him with big blue eyes, and it was then that Midoriya realized that she was the only normal one out of the bunch.
Four seconds after he started looking at her, she pulled an about-face and turned completely away from him. It appeared that Midoriya might have spoken too soon.
"Kurisu. How go the repairs?" Batgirl asked while plucking Midoriya off of Gordium's back and disintegrating the cocoon with some sort of energy wave from her hands.
"The damage wasn't as extensive as Gideon thought, so she should be able to have everything up and running soon," Kurisu said, still not turning to face them.
"Good. We've drawn too much attention to ourselves already, so we can't stay here any longer than we should and where do you think you're going?" The last question was directed to Midoriya the exact moment he turned around in an attempt to run away.
"N-N-Nothing," Midoriya poorly lied.
"I am not the person you want to try and lie to."
"Seriously, you do not want to get my sister mad," Jarro said.
"Only half of that was right, moron!" Batgirl shouted. All of a sudden, Midoriya felt like he still had some screams within him. However, just as quickly as he had made the realization, Kurisu appeared in front of him and started patting his head. Somehow, the action did wonders to calm him down.
"Hey, I know that this all scary, confusing, and just a tiny bit asinine, but no one here wants to hurt you," Kurisu said. "We're all on your side, and we're going to do what we can to make that make sense, okay?"
"O-Okay," Midoriya said with a bit of hesitation. As soon as the words left his mouth, Kurisu stopped patting his head and turned away from him once more. "U-Um, Kurisu-san, there was this purple guy who tried to attack me—"
"Koujou Joubu, age thirty-one, college dropout, failed circus performer," Batgirl said. "Don't worry about him, he's just a two-bit Villain according to the Akashic Records. What's really worth paying attention to is the bastard possessing him."
Batgirl pressed a spot on her left glove. The action resulted in a holographic display shooting out of her glove that showed a bald, blue-skinned man dressed in purple clothes and a metallic guard around his neck. His eyes were completely white, and the same symbol that was on the forehead of the purple man—of Koujou Joubu—was on his forehead.
"This is Brainiac, a SSS-level criminal who hails from the planet Colu," Batgirl said. Of course the evil monster was an alien. "For decades, his plans for genocide on a galactic scale have been foiled again and again by the world's greatest Hero, so he decided to travel back in time and kill said Hero when he was still a child and not a threat to anyone."
"Th-That's terrible! You've got to find that Hero and… protect him… from… Brainiac…" It took a while, but all the gears turned the right way. "M-Me?! No, that can't be right! I'm not… I don't even want to be—"
"It will be right, and you will want to," Kurisu said, still not turning to face them.
"H-How do you know that? Who even are you people? I've never heard of any Heroes like you!"
"That's because we don't exist. Not in this time period, anyway." Kurisu snapped her fingers. The air next to the group shimmered around a large area and morphed into something suspended in the air: a massive, rectangular, three-pronged construction made of gold metal that had multiple glass orbs embedded into it and the words "There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it." written across the top of it.
"Also, don't call us Heroes," Kurisu said. "We're Legends."