AN: So… people seem to like my BNHA stuff! Yay! In that case, I shall make a multi-chaptered story for this fandom (brownie points to whoever can guess which author's style inspired this). Enjoy!

Title: Now Cometh the Night

Summary: Several students of Yuuei have disappeared, and the remaining heroes and heroes-in-training are unable to help. Meanwhile, the abducted students find themselves trapped in a strange place where nothing makes sense – and some less than savory characters are stuck there as well.

Main Characters: Bakugou Katsuki, Midoriya Izuku, Uraraka Ochako, Todoroki Shouto

Pairings: Undecided

Warnings: Attempted murder, adult fear, general weirdness, psychological issues, OCs

Chapter One – Gone

It happened quite suddenly out of nowhere, and with no actual explanation. One moment, Midoriya Inko was talking to her son as he helped her make dinner, and the next moment it was as if he'd never been there to begin with. The knife he'd been using to chop carrots fell onto the cutting board with a dull 'thunk', and the carrot that had been in the process of being chopped fell as well, only it rolled off the cutting board and onto the floor with a slightly loud, less metallic 'thunk'.

Inko stared at the space where her son had been for a good two minutes, and then she started to scream.

Midoriya Izuku opened his eyes and groaned. The groan was not particularly necessary, but his body hurt all over, so he felt that it was a very well deserved groan. He tried to sit up, felt a dull ache in his back, and promptly thought better of it. He closed his eyes, and then opened them again.

It would be inaccurate to say that he had been "blinded by the light", because there wasn't any light to be blinded by. Instead, there was an awful lot of very bright dark. The concept of "bright dark", or "darkness that happened to be shining very brightly", was not something that Izuku felt was particularly important in his life. In fact, he'd never even imagined such a thing. Darkness was dark, and that was the way it was supposed to be – only this particular darkness didn't seem very interested in conforming to Izuku's opinion of how bright it should (or, rather, shouldn't) be.

After a few minutes of lying on his back trying to figure out exactly where he was and how he'd gotten there, Izuku forced himself to his feet, ignoring his aching body, took a step forward, and almost immediately fell on his face. At first, he wasn't entirely sure what it was he had tripped over (the darkness might have been bright, but it certainly wasn't illuminating much of the area). And then it started swearing.

"YOU FUCKING SHIT-FUCK SHIT-FOR-FUCKING DICK BRAINS I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF–" yelled the thing that had cheerfully reintroduced Izuku's body to the floor (or whatever it was he'd been lying on).

"Hello, Kacchan," Izuku sighed, very relieved to at least know that something familiar was in the area, even if that something was very likely to murder him.

"Deku?" the swearing stopped as Bakugou Katsuki tried to figure out what was going on. When it occurred to him that whatever was going on had no intention of being figured out, the swearing resumed. "Shit. What the fuck? Where the fuck are we? What the fuck happened? DAMMIT DEKU ANSWER ME!" Izuku could actually hear the excess exclamation points, and he quickly realized that that wasn't right.

"Did you hear that?" he asked.

"Did I fucking hear what?" Bakugou snarled, the quiet 'thud' telling Izuku that his childhood friend was having just as much trouble getting up as he had had himself.

"When you yelled just now," Izuku said. "There were exclamation points. I heard the exclamation points, Kacchan." He didn't pay attention to Bakugou's response – Izuku had pointed it out, and that meant that Bakugou was going to deny having heard it, whether he actually had or not. "Is anyone else here?" he called. Something moved in the darkness, causing both boys to tense for a fight, and a sigh came from the shadows (which seemed less like the shadows that objects cast and more like the shadows that shadows cast for themselves because they damn well ought to have their own).

"It depends on what you mean by 'here'," a rather tired voice replied. "If you ask me, we aren't really 'anywhere', per se – it's more like a 'nowhere', to be honest." The being that stepped out of the brightly-lit darkness looked like it was supposed to be an elderly human being, only someone had forgotten what the color palette for human beings was supposed to be (even in the world Izuku lived in, where people could be any color of the rainbow due to Quirks). That someone also seemed to have forgotten about 30 centimeters worth of person.

The being was nearly a foot shorter than Izuku, had skin the color of poorly aged Gouda cheese, watery orange eyes, and was so horrendously filthy that it was impossible to tell whether he actually had any visible hands or if he was simply wearing very ugly gloves. He wore a pair of overalls that were caked with dirt, and a cracked red hardhat with a headlight that clearly no longer worked. The fact that it was broken seemed to be irrelevant, however, as there was a very dark light coming from it that parted the bright darkness in much the same way a flashlight does, only with a little less logic to it. Tufts of gray-brown hair stuck out from beneath the hardhat, although it was difficult to tell if that was the natural color of his hair or if he was just in need of a seven-year shower (the latter, judging by the rest of him, was more than a small possibility).

"Who the fuck are you?" Bakugou demanded. Izuku tried to apologize, but the being didn't look remotely offended by the sheer amount of hostility that had been emanating from the blond since even before he spoke.

"My name is Tulip," the being told them. "Tulip LeVance. Pleasure to make your acquaintance." Izuku really couldn't say the same – the creature smelled even worse than he looked. "Please feel free to call me Tulip."

"Okay," said Izuku.

"Fuck that," said Bakugou. "What the fuck are you supposed to be, anyway?"

"Why, I'm a Quark!" he said cheerfully.

"What the fuck is a quack?" Bakugou demanded.

"A 'quack' is the noise a duck makes," Tulip replied immediately, not looking a bit deterred. "Or, occasionally, a rude term for someone who does not know what he or she or they are doing. A quark is any number of subatomic particles carrying a fractional electric charge, postulated as building blocks of the hadrons. A Quark – capitalized Q, my boy, I know you can do it – is a member of a species that can be described as vaguely humanoid, only no one but a human would bother, because other sentient species are capable of realizing that the world does not revolve around them." Tulip spoke very quickly, with a hint of amusement tinting his features.

"Do you all look like shit?" Bakugou asked bluntly. Izuku gave up on trying to apologize for Bakugou's behavior – it was a task that would make even Sisyphus weep and forfeit. Luckily, Tulip LeVance seemed completely unflappable.

"We do not," he declared. "However, I've been here – or, rather, I've not been anywhere else – for the better part of a century, and I've yet to find any supply of water large enough to cleanse myself with. Or any supply of water at all, really."

"No water?" Izuku yelped, voice cracking slightly. "We're going to die!"

"I'm not," Bakugou sneered. He was ignored.

"Ah, that's right." Tulip noted. "You humans do have an unhealthy reliance on aqueous liquid, don't you? I'd quite forgotten. We don't have many humans where I'm from, you see, and I don't think I've ever seen any 'round these parts."

"Where are you from?" Izuku wondered, slightly calmed by the seemingly friendly creature's lack of concern.

"Probably the land of failed sewage systems," Bakugou grumbled.

"Your friend has quite the attitude," Tulip noted, cheerful as ever. "To answer your question, my boy, I am from–" the Quark said a few short syllables that could not be replicated by the human tongue (or, just as importantly, the human vocal cord). "It might be hard for you to pronounce." Bakugou, of course, tried anyway, and quickly found himself choking as his tongue nearly ended up in his throat.

"I see," said Izuku, who didn't really, as Bakugou tried to untangle the inner workings of his mouth (something that Izuku was certain he had never attempted before, in more than one way). "And… how do we go home?" Tulip laughed.

"'Go home'?" he repeated. "Do you think I'd still be here if I knew?" The answer was obviously 'no', so Izuku decided not to reply. "There's no way out of here, as far as I know. Best thing to do is cross your fingers and hope for the best!" Both boys opened their mouths, Izuku about to ask another question and Bakugou about to unleash a flurry of swears, when the ground beneath their feet decided it no longer wanted to be there, and all three of them feel down into the pitch-black light of the spontaneous hole.

Iida Tenya had been visiting his brother in the hospital and had run into Todoroki Shouto, who had been visiting his mother. The two had talked for a moment (well, they had said 'hello' and stood around awkwardly for a bit, which was basically the same thing) and then they had been somewhere else.

There had not really been a transition. They had been in the hospital and then they were in the middle of a grassy field. At least, it looked like a field – the blades of grass were bright pink, and did not seem to have understood that "blade of grass" referred to a "piece of grass" rather than a knife with a grassy texture. There were also very large mushrooms, with white stalks and dark orange heads. Some also seemed to have blue spots around the base.

"…What just happened?" Todoroki asked, looking slightly surprised (which, given the massive amount of scar tissue covering one fourth of his face, was probably about as surprised as he was capable of looking). Iida, not nearly as good at dealing with unexpected occurrences, made a few garbled squeaking sounds and promptly lost consciousness. Luckily, Todoroki managed to catch him before he hit the pink grass blades (which looked every bit as deadly as an actual field of knives). "Huh."

A few paces behind them, hidden by a cluster of peculiarly colored mushrooms, something moved. It was very slow and very quiet, and it occasionally made soft clicking noises, not unlike the clicks a very large insect might make with its pincers. Todoroki looked around, convinced he had heard something, but saw nothing. As absurdly large as the mushrooms were (you could probably make a house out of one, if you bothered to hollow it out), they were rather thin – the average human would find hiding behind one very difficult.

Todoroki scanned the area once more, just in case he'd missed something, and then walked over to another mushroom, grass knives crunching underneath his feet, and sat down once he was sure there was nothing hiding behind it. As he waited for Iida to wake up, he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the mushroom that almost certainly did have something behind it. It occurred to him that whatever it was might be just as uncertain about him as he was about it. After an hour or so (or possibly just twenty minutes, but it felt like an hour, and that was what mattered), the thing hiding behind the mushroom poked its head out, and then the rest of it followed.

It had a triangular-shaped head, segmented limbs, large compound eyes, and was probably around eight feet tall. It appeared to be an enormous praying mantis.

Todoroki, unsure of how else to respond, made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp, a scream, and a sigh. The giant mantis-like creature jumped about a foot in the air and threw itself back behind the mushroom frantically. Several minutes later, it peered out once again.

"Click-click-click-click-click," it said. But what Todoroki heard was a very timid voice asking, [[Who are you?]]

It occurred to him that he had not actually heard the creature speak. He had heard the clicking, and his mind had someone figured out what the clicking was supposed to mean, even though it really shouldn't have.

"Todoroki Shouto," he introduced himself, because the giant mantis creature had asked nicely and it would be rude to ignore it.

[[What are you?]] The creature asked in another series of clicks.

"A human," Todoroki said, not knowing what else he was to say. "And… what about you?"

[[I am she called Manzanea,]] said the mantis thing. [[I am a–]] whatever word Manzanea intended to use to explain her species did not make it into Todoroki's head. It came out as a clicking sound, and it didn't show any interest in being heard as anything else. Not that it really mattered – Todoroki doubted he'd ever think of her as anything other than "very large insect". It was a good thing Kouda wasn't here, he thought. The quiet boy would probably have died of shock.

"All right, then," he said. The creature seemed pacified. For a moment, there was silence. Then, quite out of nowhere, Manzanea exploded with questions. Luckily, it was not a literal explosion, but it certainly was just as unprecedented.

[[Where are you from? Where are we now? What's a 'human'? Why do you only have two legs? What's that next to you? Is it a human too? Why do you have such a soft shell? Why aren't you clicking? How do you see? What–]] Todoroki had to cut her off before she talked his ears off.

"Look, I don't know the answer to half those questions, and I didn't hear the other half," he said irritably. "Don't talk so much. You sound like a five-year-old."

[[I reached my fifth winter a month ago,]] Manzanea told him, sounding rather indignant. Todoroki blinked.

"You mean you really are five?" he asked.

[[Five what?]] The mantis returned.

"Five years."

[[Yes. And you appear to be…]] Manzanea hesitated, looking him over. [[From your height, I would say that you have not completed more than a few moons, but you are rather well spoken for one that has not yet seen all four seasons.]]

"I'm fifteen years old," Todoroki told her. Manzanea stepped back.

[[Fifteen?]] She repeated, the clicking growing even louder. [[Are you sure?]]

"Yes." Todoroki said definitively.

[[Oh.]] She actually seemed to be a little in awe of this statement. [[You're very small, though.]] Todoroki shrugged.

"From my point of view, you're really big," he replied. Manzanea thought about this, decided she wasn't all that frightened of him, and came a bit closer.

When Iida awoke, it was to the sight of his quiet, dual-haired, heterochromatic friend having a nonchalant conversation with an enormous insect. His newly found consciousness was promptly lost once more.

AN: And that's chapter one! Lemme know what you think! I was initially gonna have more build-up to Manzanea, but then I decided against it. She's only five, after all. Actually… surprisingly enough, Bakugou and Midoriya ending up in the same place was really just a coincidence. When I had Midoriya trip over someone, I was fairly certain it would be a classmate, but it caught me off guard that it was Bakugou, of all people! Maybe that's for the best, though – the only other person who can really handle him is Kirishima. Maybe Uraraka could, though… speaking of Uraraka, she's the only one of the main characters who hasn't shown up, isn't she? She'll be here soon, though! And… well, to be honest, "main character" is just who I'm tagging on – there are lots of important characters. Kitty out!