Chapter Two

Where

"What? Do you think I'm scary when I laugh?" He accused with that annoying smile, but my reaction was not from his laugh. His pupils were slitted and his teeth were sharp. They weren't like that before. Others were noticing the same thing and starting to talk, apparently this wasn't normal.

"I think I know where we are" I murmured, Nico was the only one who heard and he crouched next to me again.

"Where are we?" It came out softly but I heard it anyway.

"If I'm right, then we're in the universe of My Hero Academia. 80% of the population here has a superpower of some sort, they call the powers 'quirks' though."

"How did you figure that out?"

"Karma, the red head"- I gestured to Karma- "is going through physical changes, and some of the people here don't look completely human due to mutations to accommodate their quirks." Nico nodded and looked at the ground. "And, I think I'm getting a quirk too. That's what I meant when I said you don't know what I can do." The boy seemed to be taking this information very well considering the gravity of the situation.

"So if we come across any of the people from My Hero Academia, You would recognize them?"

"Well, any of the main characters." Nico looked up, confused.

"My Hero Academia is an anime, a TV show, centered around a particular class of students. I would recognize any of the students, their teachers, and the villains."

"Am I part of a TV show?"

"What?"

"Am I part of a TV show?"

"No" I paused, "You're in a book series."

"What's it called?"

"The first series is Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The second series is Percy Jackson and the Heroes of Olympus. And the third is The Trials of Apollo."

"Oh" came the reply, then hesitantly, "How much does it tell you about me?"

"What's happening where you're from?"

"Does it really matter?"

"Yes"

"Gaea was defeated a few months ago and the Roman and Greek camps have been communicating, and campers are adding new cabins every day, Jason Grace is one of the leaders in all this. You know about all this, right?" I nodded. My subconscious registered the agitated fidgeting of the teens around me. I spoke in English.

"I know about the Lotus Hotel, Bianca, Minos and the Labyrinth, and Kronos' attack on Olympus and the battle at Manhattan. Those things were in the first series. The second series mentions the Roman camp and Hazel, the Argo II, your trek through Tartarus, Italy, um... it talks about you and Jason meeting Cupid and what you had to tell him to get the scepter, the Doors of Death, the battle with the gods and the giants, then going back to Camp Half-Blood and fighting with the Greeks and Romans against the monsters and everything that you mentioned, also it went over your trip back to camp with Reyna, coach Hedge and the Athena Parthenos. Oh, yeah, and that Leo was actually alive and went to Calypso's island and brought her back to Camp Half-Blood." Nico listened in silence, occasionally making a face in reaction to what I was saying.

"You said there were three series but you only mentioned two, what about the third?"

"Based off of what you told me is happening in your world, it hasn't happened yet." He nodded, pensive. I was glad to end the conversation, the pain in my side was killing me. I looked up at the white moon and got lost in my thoughts, oblivious to the chaos ensuing around me. Well, until someone fell on me. I yelled out in pain, my mind trying to think through the white hot pain once again flaring in my side and back. The person moved off of me and I looked up with a shaky breath. Karma was in a weird push-up/crouch position over me as most of the group around us panicked at the development of their quirks. That's the only thing it could have been, Kurahashi was standing alone, swaying crazily and alternately shivering violently and fanning herself with her hand as if hot. Kaede Kayano was jumping around as the grass around her feet grew extremely quickly. Chiba accidentally shrunk himself only to find himself popping up under someone several times. The only one who looked like he or she know what they were doing, was a giant boa who was slithering around scaring the other students into staying in the clearing.

"You got an explanation for this Miss Know-it-all?" Karma hissed annoyed from a few inches above me. Why was he still there?

"I do, and I explained it earlier but you guys didn't hear me. Get the others to shut up and listen for a minute and I'll explain it to everyone at once." He looked around, skeptical that it was possible to round up so many frantic people. I closed my eyes, and just felt. There was a nudge at the back of my thoughts, like a little voice that wasn't quite audible but you somehow know what it was telling you. I let the feeling guide me. I followed every signal telling me of frantic movement and imagined a bubble there. Pretty soon all the movement stopped and it was calm, for the most part. They were still talking, yelling, struggling, and in one case, crying. I opened my eyes and looked around. Most of the teens in the clearing were encased in bright bubbles with their heads sticking out the top.

"Karma, can you help me stand up?" I asked and he did so mutely. "Everyone, listen up. You need to stop panicking, in this world, this is normal." I paused to take a breath, holy cow this hurt. They weren't listening! I had to keep trying, logic said they would tire eventually. And when they did, they would have to listen.

"Guys! you're gonna be fine! Calm down, you're going through something that is normal in this world. It's not gonna kill you." I was leaning on Karma now, the pain in my side making it evident how worked up I was. At least a few were listening, and others were giving up their struggling. I had to continue.

"These changes are normal. Its OK that everyone has different mutations, no two people have exactly the same changes. 80% of the population here goes through it, you'll be fine." They were relaxing now, which was good; I didn't know how long I could keep those bubbles solid. "We're in the universe of a Japanese anime called My Hero Academia. 80% of the population on this version of Earth has a superpower they call a 'quirk'. Most of the people with quirks have some sort of outward appearance change due to their quirk. It's OK if you now have some strange or animalistic features." I took a breath.

"I think you can release them from the white bubbles now" Karma said quietly from beside me.

"I don't know how but OK" I murmured back and closed my eyes. OK little nudge feeling, what now? The nudge brought a memory to my mind of a young me popping bubbles. Is it really that simple? I hobbled over to the nearest bubble, Fuwa's bubble, and tapped it. The moment my finger hit the white sphere, it popped. Fuwa stared at me, honestly it made me more than a little uncomfortable. I hobbled to the next bubble, this one had Itona in it, and tapped the bubble. Again it popped. I was going to the next bubble when I heard Karma call me.

"Victoria, this bubble isn't disappearing." I frowned and went to them. This bubble looked no different from the others. I tapped it and it burst like the others. Now all of us were frowning in confusion.

"It's hot in here! Can you move faster?" Maehara yelled. I rolled my eyes, walked over, and popped his bubble. My side was hurting. Did I have to walk over to every bubble and tap it? Little nudge, are you there? No? OK then, no better time than the present. I kept going. It took a while due to me being the only one able to get rid of the white spheres but I did it.

"Now what?" Someone asked when we had gathered together again. It was Nagisa who answered.

"We have to see what each of us can do. If any of us is as powerful as Victoria, we should know."

"What? I'm not that powerful!" I protested from my spot against a tree. "And please, Call me Tori or Toria." They disregarded me, apparently they saw something in me that I didn't. I wonder what it was.

Karma tested out his power first, he seemed to have a dragon quirk. Watching him was super cool but everyone else was wary. Either growing up with two older brothers has toughened me, or there was something about Karma that they knew and I didn't. Most likely a bit of both.

Nagisa had some sort of snake quirk, he had been the one to turn into a boa earlier but now he shifted into a black racer.

Chiba had a size shifting quirk, like a kid-assassin version of Ant-Man, minus the suit.

Fuwa didn't seem to have a quirk. If she did, then it wasn't showing itself.

I thought Itona had a gravity quirk but I couldn't be sure. He walked up the side of a tree like it was a sidewalk but what else could he do?

Asano didn't want to show us what he could do but we... convinced... him, with a lot of threatening involved. For now we had labeled his quirk: color. In total contrast to his bland personality, he was able to change the color of his skin and clothes to anything. That lead me to wonder, if he could change the color of his clothes, could he change the color of other things too?

Isogai seemed to be an empath. He was pretty much emotion telepath.

Kaede Kayano had a nature quirk, much like the abilities of the children of Demeter. Control over the growth and changes in plants, able to cause growth or stunt it, they could shape the plants too.

Kurahashi had a temperature quirk, the most straight forwards quirk of the group yet. She was able to change the temperature of anything around her. How far are the limits of her quirk, I wondered. Maehara hadn't seemed to have gotten a quirk either, but like Fuwa, only time would tell. Ritsu, despite originally being an AI, was human now so we weren't sure if she could manifest a quirk or not. It didn't matter to me though, she was still connected to the internet and that was as cool as any of our quirks.

Nico showed the others his shadow-traveling but kept the rest of his supernatural abilities to himself.

Questions about our quirks danced around my head.

"Hey guys!" Ritsu chirped, "I was saving this for when we were done showing each other our epic new abilities but it looks like we're done now. A few minutes ago, my interfaces picked up on a signal from a cell phone tower to the east"-she pointed in said direction- "I think we should go that way, I ran the calculations and our best chance of getting home is if we team up with the local populace." And so we went. Tired as we were, we followed Ritsu as she lead us to the cell tower. I found out as we started walking that there was a look-out that I hadn't known about. Black hair in a longer style, blue eyes, tall and skinny, he had to be Tomohito Sugino. The baseball player's quirk allowed him to bend in ways not humanly possible. Bones and joints didn't restrict him at all, he was like an octopus, like Koro-sensei. We trekked, even as the sun rose and made its journey across the sky. I noticed something as we walked, our camouflaged outer layers had each turned grey. I asked Karma about it and he informed me that the layer could change colors to make the perfect camouflage for any situation. Maybe an hour before sunset we saw a lodge.

"We should rest now" Nagisa said, and we all gladly flopped onto our backs in the soft grass. "We don't know who we will cross paths with from now on and we should be prepared for anything. We can't be prepared if we're tired, so sleep." He sat against the base of a tree, probably to keep an eye out, but Karma told him to follow his own advice and sleep. I passed out almost as soon as I got comfortable, the gentle heat of the sun on my face and light breeze rustling the leaves lulling me into a dreamless sleep.