Eraser Head picked up his phone and took a quick glance. "Shiraseru, do you have any idea how we're going to get there?"
"Yeah. The rest of the villains are pretty much locked up, so we just have to enter the maze and find the lab again."
"Any other steps once we get there?"
"I figured you wouldn't listen to me, so I didn't know if I would get this far."
There were a lot more problems with this than I thought. For one, I received a lot of hate from parents for pressuring their kids into traveling someplace where it was highly likely for them to die. Having made the trip myself, I can testify that I never wanted to go through it another time. I simply told them that this was my only request and I would leave their children alone after that.
Another issue was the journey itself. We're talking about seven hundred, maybe eight hundred people being crammed into the alley one by one. The hardware shop is still fully operational, and I didn't want to get in any trouble for barging in on them. Once we did get past that part, the maze was almost impossible to navigate with so many people, and staying in the lab was enough to give someone claustrophobia.
The worst part about all of this? I couldn't guarantee my classmates anything. I explained my concerns to Principal Nezu, who assured me that we could work it out together. That's how we suspended academic classes for some time to focus on high-intensity hero training. The missed class time would be made up by extending the school day for an hour until nothing was missed.
"If this doesn't kill me, I will!" Mineta, along with the rest of the class, had just finished running a marathon.
I barely had enough space in my lungs to laugh. "Jokes on me, I'm already dead inside."
The endurance and strength training seemed the only "normal" supplement that we did. Otherwise, we were all doing individual practice to improve the consistency, strength, and usage of our Quirks. Seeing Mineta peel off purple balls from his head while his scalp was bleeding made me feel sorry for making fun of him.
After scanning the building, I focused on Midoriya. He looked much more confident compared to his performance in the sports festival. The only times I saw him use his Quirk, he was completely wasted. His arms would have been completely broken, except for the fact that they weren't. He leaped in the air at inhuman speed before delivering a deadly kick to a concrete block. Pieces of stone went flying everywhere, and Midoriya was unfazed.
Reappearing next to him, I said, "Whatever I say, don't react, okay?" Midoriya looked confused.
"Do you share a Quirk with All Might?"
Midoriya lost his focus. The random bolts of green lightning that surrounded his body disappeared. "What?"
"Do you share a Quirk with All Might?" I kept my voice so no one could hear us while enunciating every word.
"I d-don't know what you're talking about." He frantically waved his hands while looking away.
"Yes, you do. I've compared the strength of your Quirk to All Might's, and it's very similar."
"How long have you known?"
"For a Quirk like mine, I'm pretty oblivious. It took me too long to figure this out."
"You haven't told this to All Might, have you?"
"I told him first."
"Actually, I didn't expect anyone to figure out my secret." For a change of subject, he added, "Have you figured out how to get, you know, there?" He made a motion with his hand resembling a person jumping over a fence.
Eventually, Nezu and I came up with a plan, but first, I had to talk to a few people in Support. The lab was very different in appearance compared to the regular classroom. Nezu advised me to wait outside, and for a few minutes, it was just me staring at a thick airlock. Suddenly, the door burst open, and I barely scrambled out of the way in time.
"Hi!" When the smoke cleared, I saw a girl with pinkish hair and a pair of aviator's goggles. "Want to see my babies?"
Before I could respond, she pulled me inside. The Support room was an unusual cross between a lab and a small plane hangar. I wasn't sure where the light was coming from, but it was bright enough for me to see the sheer amount of devices on the walls. I recognized a pair of what might have been rocket boots, a grappling hook, and another pair of goggles that I'm sure had some other purpose to it than sight.
"I'm Bunseki Shiraseru. Look, can you help me build something?"
"Sure." She took off her goggles. "By the way, I'm Mei Hatsume." I tried to remember if I had seen her before and saw a vivid image of her in the obstacle course, using her boots to pass the competition.
I pulled up a screen and scrolled through different files until I found the folder with all the particle accelerator instructions on it.
Hatsume asked, "Aren't most accelerators supposed to be circular?"
"Yeah, but Kurogiri could just use his portals and create the same kind of loop. We need something like a portal gun, since Kurogiri probably has no interest in coming back here."
There was no time to create blueprints for the portal gun, much less build it, in the time we had. I stayed after school with Hatsume, and we went through a lot of failed designs and several more explosions.
"I don't know if I can even get used to it..." My right arm hurt from breaking my fall.
"Trust me, you will. Besides, this is a great challenge!" I wish I could be this optimistic. "Pass me the plans, will you?"
For the next two weeks, we redesigned the prototype over and over again until finally, it worked. Hatsume fired the gun twice: first at the wall, then in the opposite direction. She tossed a penny in the entrance portal and it flew out the exit portal. "I can sleep easy again." I rubbed my eyes before jumping inside the entrance portal.
I expected everything to slowly turn white, just like I had experienced before. The sensation I felt now was much more comfortable. I smoothly exited through the other portal. There was no glitching in between, and I felt great. No nausea, no disorientation, nothing.
"Outside of what we're doing now, this thing has some serious potential."
Hatsume beamed. "See? You're getting it!"
Now that we were capable of going to my world, several Pros were assigned to each class. We would enter the maze in shifts. After entering the portal, we were given clear instructions to stay in one place. I would have to watch everyone come and go. Even if it was required of me, I did it anyway. It was my fault that I dragged them into this mess.
One Friday afternoon, the first shift went through. Every Pro Hero was given a map of the maze. If I had to leave for some reason, they could do the job themselves. I recognized Hatsume and was sure to thank her before she left. In the cramped room, I created two portals at the ends of the accelerator and let it run for about 3000 cycles. The music was so loud that I had to cover my ears.
I stepped back. "You can all go now!" The portal was about as tall as a doorway and was even brighter than Aoyama's lasers. I barely saw the outlines of people stepping in. After scanning for their outlines, I saw that the support class was already over there.
Disabling the portal normally would have meant a one-month resting period, but with the portal gun, we didn't have to worry about that. After making several trips back and forth, I finally caught up with Class 1-A.
"Shiraseru, do you have any way of knowing whether anyone on the other side is safe?"
"I've made the trip once and I wasn't killed immediately, so I was fine. In reality, data doesn't translate very well between worlds. There are so many things that could be different that things are almost impossible to predict."
Kirishima said, "Are we all going to land in the same place?"
"Yeah, Kurogiri takes good notes. He's guaranteed that, at least."
After waiting until the machine cooled down to a bearable temperature, I punched in the starting sequence and waited for about 5000 cycles. Given all the noise, I was surprised that I wasn't deaf yet. It was so bright that I couldn't see anyone at all.
Screaming into the light, I yelled, "Three, two, one..."
After the relative comfort that the portal gun provided me, I was completely thrown off. The glitches, though violent, soon faded out into the background as I was in free-fall. I felt relief as soon as my feet touched the ground.
Squinting, I saw that we were on one of the busiest streets of New York. I saw that the other classes had more or less appeared in the same location as us. Car horns cut through the silence. "Guys, you might want to get out of the road first. Follow me."
Somehow, we managed to merge together into one group.
"Where are we going?" All Might caught up to us.
"My house. We live near the outskirts of the city. Plus, I need to explain a few things to my mom."
We received lots of stares, even though no one had to use their Quirks. Those people on the street all had the same reaction. They looked up from their phones, saw the mass of oddly-dressed high school kids, then looked away quickly. Bakugo stared them back. After giving directions to those in the front of the group, I pushed my way to him.
"Bakugo, you need to chill."
"What?" His rough voice attracted some more attention.
"Okay, here's a few rules." I smiled and pushed Bakugo ahead, trying to make it seem like this was no big deal. "Don't be overly aggressive. Remember, no one has Quirks, and they've already thought of us as freaks. We don't want to make anything worse."
"That's only one rule."
"Well..." I racked my brains. "It's been a long time. I'll figure it out."
Someone in uniform stopped us. "What's going on? Is this some sort of parade that we didn't know about?"
"No. If I had to explain, we'd be here for the entire day." I grimaced when I heard my slight accent. He still looked suspicious, so I added, "Don't worry about it. We'll try to leave quickly." I craned my neck. I was kind of short, so I couldn't see everyone. Still, I made everyone invisible. In Japanese, I whispered, "I don't know how long I can keep you guys like this, so hurry."
After five to ten minutes, we reappeared and I took some time to relieve some of the pressure in my head.
"I forgot to ask. Where are we?" Uraraka was amazed by what she saw. From a distance, you could see the skyscrapers huddled together. Endlessly looping advertisements combined with bright lights made the city seem more alive.
"We're in New York. Compared to the size of the state itself, NYC is relatively small, and I live in a small suburban area right outside the city. My mom commutes to work. This is just a system that I'm used to."
The lack of people allowed us to speak a bit more freely. "We're here, so where's Kurogiri?"
"Hang on." I accessed footage from the news and predicted where Kurogiri would be. He's already struck many highly populated cities, including the area of NYC that was closest to where I lived. Eventually, I pinned down his pattern. Kurogiri visits cities in order of population, but he seems to travel to New York more often than the others.
"Our best bet is to stay here." I also found my address. For some reason, speaking became a thousand times harder. "I've got to clear up some stuff."
I had been away for an entire year, but I still recognized the front of my house with its vinyl siding and rocking chairs. I slowly walked up to the front door and knocked. Behind me, I was aware that everyone was following me.
"Hello?" As soon as I saw my mom, I suddenly forgot everything, including my Quirk and why we even came back in the first place. My mom looked different. She was still good-looking, but the wrinkles around her eyes were more pronounced than I had remembered. "It's Bunseki. I'm back."
She put a hand to her head. "No. I must be dreaming." I followed her inside.
"Come on." I grabbed her by the shoulders and tried to bring her to reality just like I had done to myself so many times. "Don't you recognize me?" At that moment, I saw a picture of me taken a few days before I left. My mom didn't recognize me at all. My hair had grown longer. Because of UA's training, I was also a bit skinnier.
She sat down in a chair and stared into empty space. I touched her face, trying again to connect with her. "Ask me one question, something that only I would know."
Her breathing was shallow and quick. "What's the code phrase we used when you wanted to leave a playdate?" Tears started to pour down her face, and I was about to do the same.
"That was forever ago." I smiled. "'I have to clean the basement.' Never really understood why you picked that. We don't even have a basement."
"It's you?" She didn't lose hope.
"It's me." I gave her a hug and didn't care that I was in full view of my classmates.
"This is so unexpected... um, what should we do now?"
"Listen... there's something I need to do." I nodded, motioning for her to look outside.
"What are all these people doing here?"
"One day, did you have an encounter with a man? The one with the holographic stuff and disappeared soon after?" Her eyes widened.
"Yeah. Does this have something to do with that?"
"Come outside. I'll show you something." I caught up with everyone else. "Everyone here has a Quirk. It's kind of like a superpower."
"What about you?"
"Mine? It was given to me, and it's really hard to demonstrate." Bakugo immediately started to fire explosions from his hands. My mom almost fainted.
"This is too much information for me to process right now. Just tell me what you need to do, and we'll catch up later."
"Have you ever saw this?" I pulled up a screen and replayed the news footage of Kurogiri attacking NYC. "Well, he's a villain. We're here to stop him so he doesn't cause any more damage."
"How do I know that you're going to be safe?"
"These people have been trained to use their Quirks for their entire lives. I trust them." I looked back and saw several people nodding in agreement.
My mom gave me one last hug, and we closed our eyes. It could have been five seconds, five minutes, maybe five sunlit days. "I'll see you again sometime."
