Chapter 1 – And Fate Never Gave Me the Sign-Up Sheet

Now, when the giant wall of green appeared in front of me as I was walking home from my school in Brazil during my Youth Exchange, I had just three thoughts in my mind. Thought number one: I need to watch less anime. Thought number two: I really need to write less self-inserts; they're starting to leak into the real world. Thought number three: This better not fucking be The Familiar of Zero! That show is absolute shit and I don't care how many fanboys I just insulted, because it's true! I refuse to be a whiny midget witch's bitch!

"No," I told the green, transparent wall. "I refuse."

I tried to walk around it. The wall simply shifted locations to once again be directly in front of me. My eye twitched. I wore a white shirt, a warm black hoodie with a green hood and stripes of green running down its seams, and a pair of black track pants, also with green on their seams—not exactly good clothing to be transported to some fantasy world in. (Well, then again, Natsuki Subaru had ended up in his world in a full track suit, so I couldn't complain too much.) What was this world going to be, anyway? Bleach? Harry Potter? At least if it's Bleach I might be able to shoot up my power level pretty quickly without too much pain…

Oh, who am I kidding? I've written enough self-inserts of various series at this point to know that there is definitely another version of me somewhere out there in the multiverse pounding away at a keyboard. And knowing me, being my own self insert means pain.

I wanted none of that. The less pain I had to go through, the happier I was, in my opinion.

I stomped around the strange wall, which was clearly a portal to another dimension, and continued forward on my way home. The portal again teleported directly in front of me. I screeched to a halt before I could accidentally step foot into it, and dashed around it, tearing off down the sidewalk. People looked at me strangely; here was this mostly pale American kid with weird tan lines, decked out in the uniform of one of the local high schools, running at full speed in… eighty-degree weather? It felt like eighty-degree weather. They had the right to give me some weird looks; I doubted they could see the very obvious portal chasing me, because they paid absolutely no attention to it.

"GET AWAY FROM ME!" I screamed over my shoulder at it, pissed. It was quickly catching up, floating through the air with surprising speed. "I HAVE TOO MUCH TO WRITE ANYWAY! I'M DOING THIS FOR YOU, OTHER ME! DON'T WE HAVE LIKE, FOUR OTHER STORIES IN THE WORKS ALREADY!? GIVE YOURSELF A FUCKING BREAK AND LEAVE ME ALONE!"

That earned me yet more curious stares, especially from the pedestrians who understood English, but I hardly gave a single fuck at that point. I actually had a pretty good life going right about now. I did not want to lose it.

Soundlessly, the portal zipped in front of me, and unfortunately, at that point I was going too fast to stop. I ran straight into it, screaming a final message to the guy behind the keyboard:

"YEAH, WELL, FUCK YOU, TOO!"

My vision went green. Suddenly, pain flared in my body—unspeakable pain, pain like I'd never felt before. I screamed as every cell suddenly felt like it was being stomped on, squashed, and then molded like clay. It felt like my body was being broken up and put through the wash. Bile rose in my stomach, and I would've thrown up, but there was nothing to throw up into in this weird portal.

I blinked tears away, and suddenly my surroundings shifted to an old and dimly-lit stone building which was empty except for an altar, which I stood in the center of. An eerie silence, broken only by the muffled sounds of city traffic outside, hovered in the air, thick enough for my hackles to stand on end. I could practically see the dust in the dim light from the flickering electric lights overhead. Wherever the hell I was, it appeared to be late evening, as when I looked out a nearby window, the light level on the city street outside felt to be either just before nightfall or just after daybreak. Dozens of women clustered all around me, each of them wearing eccentric black clothing. All wore wide-brimmed, pointy witches' hats, like they'd been dressing up for a Halloween party.

Every cell in my body ached.

My knees crumpled and I fell backward, passing out. When I woke up, everything hurt and I couldn't move.

Well, fuck. This was happening now.

With nothing else to do, I stared forward with a deadpan. I refused to give these damn bitches the joy of seeing my scream and cry, mostly because I'd already covered that in the portal. So instead, my brain defaulted to the only thing I knew how to do to keep myself sane: sarcasm.

"You guys don't live in a castle where there's a pink-haired witch who is really bad at everything except making explosions, do you?"

The witches all frowned and looked at each other.

They said something to one another in a language I really didn't understand. Judging by their Asian facial features, I'm going to say it was… Japanese. It didn't have enough words that sounded like inappropriate jokes or funny onomatopoeias to be Chinese, and I didn't know what the hell Vietnamese sounded like, so that's what I was going with. Plus, I thought I heard some -sans and -chans in there, as well as maybe a -sama or two, which I knew from my many hours stuck in front of a laptop screen to be Japanese honorifics.

The pain increased slightly before subsiding, leaving me with a cold sweat and ragged breathing. A deep fear rooted in my heart: Was I dying? Was this what it felt like to die?

One stepped forward, snow white hair cascading down her back despite the fact that she looked no older than her mid-twenties. Her cloak flowing behind her, she walked up the altar steps to my level, and I tensed; what did she want with me? I had no idea. I didn't speak Japanese. I was still barely able to hold a decent conversation in Portuguese! Any language outside English basically equaled plus one order of Haha, you suck!, served fresh and spicy.

Before I could do anything (not that I could do anything anyway), the witch-looking lady lifted her hand out and pressed the tips of her smooth, dexterous fingers to my forehead.

Pain seared through my brain like it was being overloaded with years' worth of information in one go, and like an idiot, I passed out again. I didn't even get to spat out a single, "Fuck you, you fucking bitch!" before exhausted unconsciousness overtook me.

~o~

I woke up slowly, like my consciousness was a ball on a chain that I was dragging to wakefulness. I groaned and tried to roll over, but my body protested that, so I didn't move it anymore. I rubbed my still-closed eyes with a yawn. Weird memories plagued my mind: a bunch of women decked out in early Halloween, who clearly liked Hocus Pocus far too much than should be normal. Being magically kidnapped from the streets of my host city and entering excruciating pain. One of the ladies mentioned above knocking me out by merely touching my forehead.

What a weird dream, I thought, before noticing two things.

One: the bed I used in my host family's apartment was soft, not cement-level hard.

Two: Was I just thinking in Japanese? Because that thought had certainly sounded like Japanese.

My eyes opened and I was greeted with the dimly lit stone room, the convent of Japanese witches still gathered expectantly around me. A few seconds passed in which I simply stared at my supernatural kidnappers, barely holding back an eye twitch.

"Hello?" I spat out.

"Ah, Lord, you are awake!" one of the witches gasped suddenly, and somehow I was able to fully understand her this time. My brain didn't hurt anymore, either (even if the rest of me did); in the back of my mind, I realized that the white-haired witch must've somehow rewritten my brain to understand Japanese or something similar.

A weary sigh rumbled from my throat and I weakly folded my arms, biting my lip to keep from screaming curses at the absolutely horrible amount of pain produced from that mere motion. "Alright, dammit, first of all, while I appreciate you calling me Lord and all, I am just about the least royal person on this planet." I fixed them with a tired gaze. "And second of all, where the fuck am I, why the fuck did you bring me here, and take me the fuck back home."

The witches stared silently at me for several seconds.

"…Shouldn't that be second of all, third of all, and fourth of all?" another one of them, a short woman with… chains?... curling down her back instead of hair pointed out. I blinked and shuddered. That… that was just weird. Who the hell had chains for hair? What world was this, even, where someone could even have that as a natural part of his or her body? And it was definitely natural, because the chains grafted so perfectly into her head, I couldn't even tell where the flesh ended and the iron began.

"Not the point," I said after getting over the what the fuck of seeing something that weird in real life.

Another sudden flash of increased pain for no reason made me hiss. I tasted blood; I'd bitten my lip a little too hard.

"Relax, ladies," the white-haired woman who'd knocked me out before said, stepping forward again. Now that I had more time to get a clear look at her, I could see that she had a sharp nose that sloped up slightly at the end, violet eyes, and black lipstick. I gagged inwardly at that. Man, someone was edgy as fuck. "Our Lord has a right to know why we have summoned him from the world he was lost to. As you are surely aware, Lord, we are the League of Witches and you are the great Villain, Lucifer. We have summoned you from the far reaches of the multiverse with the Quirk of our newest recruit, Salem, several weeks after All Might punched you so hard that you were forced to escape to another world with your Black Hole Quirk, or risk death. The punch obviously messed something up, though, since you fail to remember any of this and were speaking a different language, so to help you, I, Satella, used my Language Quirk to allow you to once more understand Japanese."

That gave me a start. Villains… Quirks… I was in the world of My Hero Academia. What the fuck? I'd never heard of a League of Witches, though…

A woman to my left, so pale she resembled a vampire, waved. Red veins wove from the back of her head. She reminded me eerily of the design of the Big Bad of RWBY who was named… Salem…

I stared at her.

Salem stared at me.

I mentally facepalmed. Goddammit, other me, really? As if this world isn't fucked up already with All for One running wild and Shigaraki destined to become the next Symbol of Evil, you had to include motherfucking SALEM into the mix? I groaned.

Okay, first of all, I had no idea why these ladies thought I was their "Lucifer," but I needed to set them straight. Maybe then they'd send me back to my motherfucking HOST COUNTRY so I could continue my motherfucking YOUTH EXCHANGE and my other world's version of me could get a motherfucking BREAK.

Meu Deus.

"Okay, first of all," I said in perfectly fluent Japanese, "I am not Lucifer. I am Evan Gamble, I'm eighteen going on nineteen, and I have no fucking idea what's happening."

"But you are fifteen, just like you're supposed to be," Satella said with a tilt of her head. "Not eighteen."

I blinked. "What? Of course I'm eighteen."

Someone lifted up their hand and I supposed their Quirk had something to do with creating mirrors, because suddenly the skin of their hand was a perfectly clear mirror. I frowned into it… and my jaw dropped despite the flash of pain that this caused. Because even though my appearance was mostly the same, for some reason that only Jerkass Other Me™ knows, I was now about a foot shorter. Oh, and my hair had become a deep indigo for some reason.

Well… I mean, that at least looked cool, though, so… yay?

"I am not motherfucking Lucifer!" I said vehemently, more panicked now. "And wait, isn't it weird that you twenty-something-years-old women are calling a fifteen-year-old kid Lord!?"

The witches looked at each other, flabbergasted by the question.

"Um, no, Lord," Chains-for-Hair said, tilting her head. "You are our Lord, Lord."

A sweatdrop hung from my hand. Goddammit, these women were hopeless. And what the fuck was this Lucifer guy doing with his fucked-up life anyway!? Like, seriously!?

"Are you sure you're alright, Lord?" Salem asked innocently. "You really don't remember any of us or any of this?"

"NO, BECAUSE I'M NOT YOUR FUCKING LORD!" I exploded, my veins pulsing angrily on my forehead. I wished there was a goddamn table to flip, or at least to introduce my head to. Repeatedly. "GET THAT THROUGH YOUR THICK SKULLS!"

I was short, I was in physical agony, I was fifteen, and I was annoyed.

And what the witches did next really didn't help anything.

Satella sighed. "Blaire, use your Insight Quirk to prod his Quirk factor. That should be all we need to bring Lord Lucifer back to his senses."

A catwoman with purple cat ears and a purple cat tail giggled and hopped up the steps, checking me out, and I wished I could scoot back away from her without having pain erupt like a volcano in me. She looked like she wanted to do unspeakable things with me, and I wanted no part of these crazy bitches' games. But before I could try to force myself to move and haul ass out of Houston, the catwoman, whose name must've been Blaire—again, what the FUCK, Other Me!?—knelt down and stabbed at one of my toes with her pointer finger. Straight through my laceless shoe.

She blinked. "Wait, this is weird. Your Quirk is… the ability to discharge smoke from your body, while your body loses matter in return? That's not right… it should be Black Hole…"

"Yeah, that's because I'm not your fucking Lucifer!" I growled, and I made the mistake of sitting up to glare at her. Stabbing my toe was just not cool, and hurt like fuck. Unfortunately, that had made me momentarily forget about the other thing going on with my being right now.

Pain flared, tongues of fire crackling and eating away at me. I immediately collapsed backwards again, the back of my head smacking roughly into the stone altar.

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—!" I screamed as my body burned and churned and melted. My vision swam. I was cut off by the sound of doors slamming open and police sirens, so many police sirens, and a deep voice shouting, "FEAR NOT—!"

Then I very heroically passed out again.

I was making a goddamn habit of this, wasn't I? I better not end up like my One Piece SI, at least.

Fuck!

~o~

I woke up to blinding lights and a lot of worried talking. My entire body ached as if something foreign had been mixed with my every cell and molecule. I opened my eyes and stared up at a white, tiled roof; a quick glance down and to the side showed me that I laid on a somewhat stiff, blue bed lacking covers, with only a white blanket on me. My body screamed when I tried to sit up, though not as bad as the last time I'd tried to. Even so, I quickly decided that maybe moving wasn't such a good idea at the moment. That left me with only one other option: continue to observe and try and figure out what the fuck was going on now.

A quick look around told me I was in a hospital room. As with most hospital rooms, it was rather bland and empty except for a desk, some cabinets, a curtain separating me from the other half of the room, and some medical supplies whose names I wasn't knowledgeable enough to know. Sorry, I can't be a reliable narrator about everything.

"Hello?" I croaked out, my voice both dry and airy.

The voices halted, and footsteps echoed. Then the curtain was pulled away, and I saw for the first time who was in the room with me. And it was… really weird seeing a man with a dog head in person. All Might was even more manly and badass in person than he was on paper, though.

"Ah, young boy!" All Might said happily, giving me a quick salute and grinning brighter than Monkey D. Luffy himself. His smile was so brilliant it should've come with a warning for people with sensitive eyes. His two prongs of blond hair sticking off the top of his head bounced a little as he nodded his head cheerfully. "I am very pleased to see you are alright. We were worried when we saw you shaking and collapsing on that altar in the League of Witches's lair. How are you feeling?"

"Like an elephant held a dance party on my body," I said bluntly.

Someone else shoved their way between the dog-headed man (the police chief, if I remembered correctly, although his name escaped me at the moment) and All Might: a grizzled old man in a white doctor's uniform. Old as he was, he stood up tall and proud, his shoulders broad and strong. His chin was pointy, and two bull horns stuck out of the top of his head. I couldn't help but stare at the sight; seeing people with animal parts was just… it was just really freaky for someone who'd just come from a completely normal world, okay? I couldn't just ignore it.

"That seems about right for a Quirkless person who suffered gaining a Quirk due to the side-effects of the One-Way Dimensional Portal Quirk," the doctor said, readjusting a pair of glasses that sat on his pointy nose. "Hello, young man. I am Dr. Yuni. I have been overseeing you since All Might rescued you from those villains."

"H-Hello, sir," I said, wincing as I reached out to shake his hand. My body threatened rebellion if I moved it another inch, and screamed bloody murder when Yuni grasped my hand and shook.

Owwwww. Fuck you, other me. How sadistic are you, really? Or does this count as masochistic?

Pain sucks.

My arm sighed in relief when I allowed it to simply drop and hang limp over the side of the hospital bed.

"So, who are you two, then?" I asked, jabbing my thumb at All Might and the police chief and wincing; damn, even that hurt. I decided it would probably be best to play it safe and pretend to be a dumb teen knowing nothing. Telling anyone that I had future knowledge in a world where Villains with pretty damn powerful Quirks ran rampant was just asking to be kidnapped and have a rescue arc started. And, my apologies, but I didn't want anything to do with that. Nuh-uh, no siree. I was no one's damsel in distress.

Mr. Dog Head bowed. "It is nice to meet you. My name is Tsuragamae Kenji; I am the chief of this city's police."

All Might puffed up dramatically and flexed like a WWE wrestler. "I am All Might, the Number One Hero and Symbol of Peace! I beat up those weird ladies who kidnapped you. So my good friend Chief Tsuragamae could arrest them and put them safely in jail. The so-called League of Witches have been an unruly bunch lately, threatening our citizens' safety, and so I am afraid that they had to be taken down."

"I see," I said, smiling but flinching when I accidentally shifted my leg. "Thank you for saving me."

"You are welcome, citizen!" All Might's ridiculously charismatic laugh boomed out of his chest and somehow made everything seem so much more comfortable. "It is the duty of any hero to save those in need with a smile and a laugh! Your gratitude is all that I need! Oh, and by the way…" He winked. "I signed your blanket."

"Huh?"

I looked down and sure enough, there it was—that classic All Might signature with the star that I remembered seeing on Midoriya Izuku's notebook in… the second episode? I think it was the second. Might've been the first… my memory on that was a bit hazy, but then again, it was a small detail, so… It didn't really matter?

"Well, then, young man, can you give us a full report of what happened in the lair of the League of Witches?" Chief Tsuragamae asked. I nodded, introduced myself, and proceeded to explain all the details as best as I could remember them. I did, however, strategically forget to mention knowing about Quirks and stuff beforehand.

"So what's all this stuff about Quirks and Quirkless, anyway?" I asked, playing the ignorant kid from another world who would have no way of knowing this. "And what did those women do to me?" This I was legitimately curious about. I wanted to know just why my body felt like a wrecking ball had decided it was a good idea to wreck me.

"Quirks are basically genetic superpowers," Dr. Yuni said with an adjustment of his glasses. "Eighty percent of our entire world currently has them. Because of this surge of empowered people, Heroism is now an actual profession. As for your second question, to the best of my medical knowledge and what I know about the League of Witches's Quirks…" He shrugged. "It would appear your radical pain, deaging, and changed hair color were side-effects of jumping worlds by way of the One-Way Dimensional Portal Quirk, your understanding of Japanese was caused by the Villain Satella's Language Quirk, and your current pain was a result of you having suddenly gained a Quirk."

My jaw dropped. Come to think of it, that one Witch… er, Satella?... had said that I had the power to discharge smoke from my body. So what, was I some non-Logia version of Smoker, then? Cool. Still hurt like a bitch, though, so much less cool.

"You're the first known person to survive Salem's Quirk, woof," Chief Tsuragamae told me, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. "You should feel lucky. Other victims pulled from other worlds have been found and… well, the results were never pretty. You don't want me to show you the pictures, trust me."

That sent a terrified shiver down my spine. Jeez, just how close to death had that whole ordeal brought me? Actually… that reminded me of something else I wanted to know. "How long have I been out?" I asked. Ah! And that reminded me of yet another thing. "And… you guys have mentioned that Salem witch's Quirk was named… One-Way Dimensional Portal… so…?"

All Might frowned, and the room suddenly felt much darker without his sunny smile. "You've been out for one week, nearly," he said, his voice losing its cheerful demeanor."And… I am afraid that the portal only works when pulling people from other dimensions. They cannot take people from this one to others. It is also currently a one-of-a-kind Quirk. I am sorry… but I am afraid you will not be able to return to your homeworld."

That sobered up the mood in the hospital room real quick. All Might's fists clenched and shook at his side. I wondered what was going on in his head. Did he blame himself for my dimensional kidnapping? If I'd arrived just a little sooner, this poor kid wouldn't have been taken away from everything he'd ever known. Is that was he was thinking? Wondering this soured my mood even more, and I desperately wanted to curl up into a ball. I couldn't even do that, though.

I cast wet eyes up to my hospital room's ceiling.

Sure, I had gained smoke powers, but… at what cost? My old friends… my old Brazilian host family… my real family… I'd never get to see them again. My head and heart ached, and an incredible sadness billowed deep inside me. The wetness in my eyes extended to my cheeks, and I cried.

For a few minutes, the hospital room was silent, save for my shaky sobs. Police Chief Tsuragamae gritted his sharp, canine teeth, eyes closed. Like All Might, Dr. Yuni clenched trembling fists. They both clearly wanted to help me in some way. But what criminal could the dog-headed cop bring to justice for me when all of the members in the League of Witches were already behind bars? What could Dr. Yuni do to ease a pain that no medicine could cure?

It was, as usual, All Might who took the reigns and blasted away the melancholic atmosphere in the mostly empty hospital room. He shook his head and grinned, pearly teeth reflecting the light in the room and sparkling. "Worry not, Young Evan!" the Symbol of Peace told me, a pillar of inspirational cheerfulness holding us all aloft. "For an idea is here! In my head. Over the past week you've been unconscious, Chief Tsuragamae and I asked the media to spread your story to the masses; since we knew you would have no place to return to, we hoped someone might be willing to host you in their home. As far as I know, no one has yet responded to the number we've sent, but we haven't yet checked today..." He sweatdropped and turned to the dog-headed chief. "Er, Chief, actually… I appear to have forgotten the number. Do you still have it?"

Chief Tsuragamae snorted. "I saved it on my phone in case something like this happened. Allow me a second to call Foreign Relations and see if anyone has agreed to host you…" He dialed a number, held up the phone to his ear, and let it ring for a while. After a minute or two, the call went through to the main number, and he hummed and nodded, adding a few Yes's and no's and explaining what he was calling for. The police chief paused a moment, then nodded again, a smile spreading up his doggy face. I had a strange urge to pet his snout and rub between his ears, but I thought he might not like that very much. "Very good, I understand. Thank you." He hung up.

"What's the word?" I asked quietly, drying tears caking my cheeks.

The dog-headed man grinned and gave me a thumbs up. "We got someone who called in earlier this morning and said they'd be your new host family! They are the Midoriyas. The father is currently working overseas in America, although he too has condoned accepting you as a host son. The mother and son both live in this city."

All Might blinked. "Midoriya?" I thought I heard him mutter, "Huh… small world…"

As for me?

My jaw dropped.

No way. No freakin' way.

Other Me, you're a full-on jerkass for spiriting me away to the world of My Hero Academia—permanently—and making me suffer all this body horror… but… goddamn if you haven't repaid me for all the bad shit you've put me through. This doesn't quite make up for it all, but… it comes close.

A smile turned up my lips.

I'd always wanted a little brother.