Chapter 10

Leto

Seven Weeks Ago, a Universe Away

Shota waited up. And waited. And waited. Until, barring a multi-hours long train delay and an inability to hail a cab, they couldn't possibly have taken that long to get home. He kept an eye on the news for word of a villain fight or a train accident or anything horrific like that. Nothing. He was sure Midoriya had just forgotten to text when he arrived at his mother's home. It wasn't a big deal, it was a journey middle school kids regularly made, albeit in the day. If he couldn't trust the problem child to do an act of kindness not very far above helping an old lady to cross the street in terms of danger and difficulty, what could he trust him to do?

But even so. It wasn't in character for Midoriya to forget a direct instruction, as long as that direct instruction was not "stop breaking every bone in your body." He'd gone above and beyond on the first part of the journey, texting "we're on the train." Something was wrong.

He tried calling, and it didn't go through. A subsequent text message came back as undeliverable.

Calling Inko Midoriya was, without exaggeration, the hardest phone call he'd ever made in his life. At best, if her son had simply forgotten, it was an unforgivably late hour to call. At worst, they were both about to get very bad news.

The phone rang a number of times, and almost went to voicemail. "Hello?" Mrs. Midoriya asked, her voice a mix of sleep and worry.

"I'm sorry to disturb you Mrs. Midoriya, I just wanted to confirm that your son made it home tonight."

"What?" she asked, the worst possible word in the world to hear in this context.

"The class worked with a young lady from Greece who is currently staying at a place near your residence, he asked permission to help her get home safely and I granted it. He was supposed to text me when he arrived at your home."

She didn't answer, but he could hear the sound of the phone being carried at great speed, and a knock on a door. "Izuku? Izuku sweetheart? Did you come home without waking me?" he heard distantly, as though she were calling into his room with a hand over the receiver. And for one split second, Shota prayed to hear Midoriya's voice in that same distant way. Instead, his mother swore very harshly, then immediately apologized. "I'm so sorry, I just … he's not here."

"Try to get hold of him, I'll try to contact the young lady."

"Of course, thank you," she said and hung up without further ado.

Thirteen answered almost immediately. "Is everything all right?" she asked.

"Have you heard from Gianakos this evening?"

"No … not since she left with you …"

"Please try to call her. Midoriya was supposed to accompany her home, and then go to his mother's residence. He never made it there."

"I'll call her. I'm sorry, Shota, I didn't think anything of letting her go."

"Neither did I."

He stared at his phone, willing it to ring. Willing Mrs. Midoriya to call back with a tearful pronouncement the pair had been stuck on a stalled train in a cellular dead zone, but were now on their way safely.

But of course, it was Thirteen who called back. "Shota, it was a policeman who answered her phone. There was a fight, she was unconscious, they're interviewing witnesses but they haven't put together what happened yet." Internally, Shota swore as harshly as Mrs. Midoriya had earlier.

Leto stirred awake somewhere with excruciatingly bright light and sore all over. "Where am I?" she asked, speaking her native tongue without thinking. "Where's Izuku?" she asked, this time in Japanese, trying to sit up.

"Hold on, we'll bring the translator," a nurse said reassuringly. Oh no no no, how long had it been?

A different nurse showed a policeman into her room and handed her a phone that was on speakerphone. "How are you feeling, Ms. Gianakos?" a man on the other end of the line asked in fluent Greek, only lightly accented. Leto almost cried in relief at being able to explain and have it explained in her native language.

"I'll be all right, I was with a boy named Izuku Midoriya and he stood up for me, is he all right?"

"We haven't been able to locate Mr. Midoriya, we were hoping you could help us with that," the police officer said, and Leto understood long before the man on the phone translated.

"No, no, mother of God, no!" she sobbed, burying her face in her hands.

"Ms. Gianakos, what happened?" the police officer asked gently.

"Katzu … the man who accosted us … he has a quirk that evaporates any water nearby, including what's in people," she mumbled, not bothering to even try to speak anything other than Greek. "It could kill if he used it on a living thing, and he was starting to, and there were so many people. I was so stupid, Izuku's punch probably knocked him out and ended it, but I just wanted Katzu away from all those people … I was an idiot, I didn't give him enough warning …" She paused to catch her shaking breath and let the translator do his work. He was nice enough to not call her an idiot in his translation, only conveying her regrets.

"Ms. Gianakos. Can you confirm that you transported Mr. Midoriya?"

"I must have, if you haven't found him. I was trying to move Katzu to somewhere outside the city, there was a beach I went to with him once where no one was late at night – could Izuku be there?"

The translator did his work, and a painful silence fell.

"Ms. Gianakos … you've been unconscious for three days."

"No …" she gasped, pulling herself into a fetal position on the bed. If she'd had anything in her stomach, she'd have vomited.

"Is it … is it at all possible you sent him somewhere else?"

She shook her head. "No, I was focused on that beach, and on the place we were to hold myself in place, that was all, I didn't let anything else into my head," she said, when she could speak without choking.

"Is it possible you sent him into the water?" the officer asked.

"No, or if I did it would have only been the very shallow water. I was imagining a gazebo where we spent some time that was a distance from the water, he would have been transported to that gazebo or within a two meter radius of it. This makes no sense. It's never worked any other way …" But she had been so exhausted and dehydrated already, and she'd been so upset. Maybe she'd been off by a little bit, and Izuku was so weak from the day's training and Katsu draining him he hadn't been able to swim ashore … No. It had literally never worked like that. Even when she was a child using her newly discovered quirk to send her stuffed animals to cheer up her grandmother. The plushies had always arrived exactly on the couch where she'd sent them. What was more worrying was the possibility her mind had wandered. Where else would she have been thinking about? "Have you … have you checked with the Greek consulate? Maybe I did send him somewhere else. I met Katzu online two years ago, he's … he's part of the reason I wanted to come to Japan," she admitted miserably. She'd gone all that way to meet a man, who turned out to be this. "I may have thought of home, for just a moment while I opened the gate."

When the translator explained this, the police officer visibly relaxed. "We have not. We'll send inquiries right away." Please, sweet Christ child, let that be it. Let sweet Izuku have appeared with no warning in the girls' dorm to the shock and horror of all parties, let the Hellenic Police be trying to figure out how on Earth a Japanese national had ended up in their country out of nowhere as they spoke, maybe the international inquiries would cross each other and intertwine by the end of the day … It would explain why she'd been unconscious so long. She had never transported anyone or anything internationally, it was a greater distance than she'd ever tried. The image of Izuku suddenly materializing on the bed where she'd curled up with her laptop, exchanging messages with a mysterious physics student from another country, only to be met with shrieks of terror from the girl who lived in that room now almost made her smile.

"I have to ask, Ms. Gianakos … is there any possibility that the transport … failed? Perhaps lethally?"

No, that she could discount. Leto shook her head. "No. I've never had anything come out harmed in any way, or not make it to the destination. The biggest danger has always been … well, to me."

"Thank you for your time. We wish you a swift recovery," the police officer said politely. That wasn't the end of that, she knew it, she'd broken the law trying to use her quirk offensively in public, and especially since it had gone so awry (hopefully hilariously, hopefully Izuku was safe in Greece) it was going to be a stink. She had to call the consulate, but the thought of hiding behind the consulate if Izuku wasn't safe made her feel sick with guilt. If she'd hurt him … She'd never forgive herself, not for the rest of her life.

"Did you … what happened to Katzu?" she managed to ask in Japanese, her morale having rallied that much before the officer left.

"You won't have to worry about him again, Ms. Gianakos. He was arrested at the scene."

It was the girl who got excoriated in the press. She was the easiest to blame in the Japanese press for many reasons – she was an unlicensed foreigner who'd acted rashly when, by all the witness accounts, Midoriya had had the situation in hand. The girl's ex-boyfriend – another reason to rake her over the coals, to too many, how dare a woman of twenty (or girl of eighteen, when she met him) be incautious and unwise in love – wasn't a villain, or a hardened criminal. He was a young fool and a bully with a wounded pride, dangerous in a crowd but easy to neutralize. It should have been over in seconds. In fact it was – the man was incapacitated by the time Midoriya had been transported.

Even Midoriya's mother hadn't blamed Shota. "Thank you, thank you for always looking out for him, for everything you taught him," she told him, on the verge of tears and with a devastating note of finality in her voice, after a week had gone by with no sign of him.

"There's no need, ma'am, the search isn't over yet," he'd cut her off gently, though his own hope was flagging.

But Shota knew better. He should have known, when he saw the way Gianakos' entire manner fell instantly, when she realized she'd miscalculated and would have to get home alone in the dark, that something more was going on than the natural nerves of a young woman in a strange land. She'd been in Japan getting around on her own for months after all. Based on what she'd said after the fact, she hadn't known for sure she was being stalked, but she'd suspected it.

But self-blame couldn't be allowed to lead to self-pity. As nice as it would be to live in a world where Shota had called her a cab, or taken her back to UA to stay in guest quarters, or walked her home himself, those imaginings weren't useful.

Gianakos always insisted her quirk had never harmed anyone or anything she transported, or transported it randomly, and all evidence seemed to back up this assertion. So, barring the quirk behaving in a way it never had, even stranger possibilities had to be considered, possibilities that were very far outside of his field of expertise.

The disappearance had quickly become an international incident – the Greek consulate had wanted to take Gianakos home immediately, and the Japanese government would have been happy to send her on her way and be done with it. But Shota fought for her to stay. Yes, she probably could tell them everything they needed to know to figure out what had happened from her home country, but if there was any hope left, they'd need her quirk, not just her knowledge. And once she left, getting her back into the country to try to recreate what had happened would be a nightmare. Besides, as angry as he was with her part in the incident, she deserved to be part of bringing him home. She'd need that, for her own peace.

"So you still have hope, then, that the boy is to be found?" the commissioner from the justice department asked. It was a rainy day, and he folded away his umbrella as they stepped inside the office building where he was housed.

"Yes. Based on the evidence available, it is likely the boy arrived safely wherever it was she sent him. We just have to figure out where that was."

"And if that somewhere was deep in the Earth or out to sea?" the commissioner asked, citing two of the more gruesome possibilities the press had posited.

"Then the only way we'll ever know is if Gianakos can retrace what she did that day."

The commissioner sighed. "You don't seem like the fanciful type. I'll trust your judgment. The young lady can stay."

"Thank you, commissioner."

She obviously didn't want to face him. Facing him was probably even harder for her than facing Mrs. Midoriya had been for him. But she did – she didn't hide when he went to Thirteen's office to speak to her. Gianakos bowed as low as she could, knowing the appropriate sign of contrition for her host country. "I'm so sorry, sir," was all she managed through tears, her accent thicker than the last time they'd spoken.

"I don't need your contrition. I need your intelligence, I need your talent. I need you to bring him home." English was easier for her.

"I don't know if I can, sir."

"You can, and you will." He put a hand on her shoulder, and softened his tone. "You are brilliant. Thirteen wouldn't have taken you on if you weren't. You will find a way."

She looked up, sniffling. "Okay. I will bring him home," she said, unsteadily.

Things were quiet in the dorms. Too quiet.

They had been ever since that morning, when Mr. Aizawa had told them Midoriya never made it to his mom's apartment, and was now missing.

Dr. Kikuko, the school counselor, had gathered all of Class 1A in the common area, and told them they could talk to her any time, that her door was always open, and encouraged them to talk amongst themselves. Everyone had been quiet, not wanting to speak, for a long moment. "It's not fair," Ochaco said after a long moment, and Tsu hurt for her friend. "After everything he's been through, that it was friendly fire that … That …" she couldn't bring herself to say it, and burst into tears, trying to hide her face. Tsu and Mina hugged her at once, doing everything they could to smother her in love and warmth.

"Shut up!" Bakugo shouted, (metaphorically) exploding into his raging self, standing from the couch where he'd been slouching, his hands balled into fists.

"Bakugo, let's let Ururaka speak …" Dr. Kikuko said calmly.

"He's not dead! That dumbass is just lost somewhere! He's not allowed to be dead!"

It was the kind of unhinged thing you expected from Bakugo, but … he was technically right. They didn't know he was gone. It was comforting to imagine Deku wandering through China or Australia or who knew where, trying to find cell service or someone that spoke Japanese. They'd laugh when it was done, when he was safe with them again. "We don't know what happened at this point," Dr. Kikuko said calmly.

But the longer time went on, the more likely it seemed that … he was truly gone.

Three weeks later, Todoroki set up a shrine outside the dorm, in a sunny spot where Deku liked to sit to do homework or write in his notebook. Bakugo lost it – as expected. "What the hell's wrong with you, Icy Hot? He's not dead!"

"If he could come back to us, he wouldn't have been gone this long," Todoroki said, just as certainly.

"Take it down!" Bakugo ordered, ignoring this (all too reasonable) argument.

"No."

Bakugo tried to take it down himself, it came to blows. Mr. Aizawa was there seconds later to break it up, before too many blows had been landed. "Todoroki, set it up in your room. Bakugo – let it go. It's not easy on any of us," the teacher ordered, but didn't punish either of them.

Which, irrationally, was the moment that caused Tsu to break down.

Mr. Aizawa must really think Midoriya was gone, to go so easy on them.

"Aww, Tsu, it's okay, tensions are just high, they've gotta blow off steam in a manly way, that's all," Kirashima reassured, though his voice was also shaking, as he threw his arms around her.

"I miss him so much," Tsu said weakly.

"I know," Kirashima said, not trying so hard to sound cheerful, and patted her back.

Toshinori took tea with Mrs. Midoriya several times a week, just so she wouldn't be alone so often – she'd already been lonely, with Young Midoriya staying in the dorms most days, but now …

"I just … should we have a memorial?" Mrs. Midoriya asked one day, wringing her hands, not looking Toshinori in the eye.

"Aizawa seems pretty sure he's alive. He kept the girl here so she can help us find him," he said, aiming to sound more certain than he felt.

"It's been over a month, Toshinori," she said weakly. She'd never used his given name before.

She seemed so alone, so frail. At least it hadn't been his fault – the boy's disappearance had had nothing to do with him, for once it hadn't been the villains that put him in danger, just a possessive ex-boyfriend. But that was extremely cold comfort. He missed the boy, missed his smile, missed his eagerness, missed his heart. It had to be unbearable for his mother. "Forgive me but … has the boy's father been home at all since …"

She scoffed, and Toshinori was almost startled. "Maybe he'd come if we had a memorial. I don't know. He knows Izuku's missing, we spoke about it … twice." A whole two times, in a month since his child had been missing. "He hasn't been home in …" she paused as she did math in her head, her mind slowed by a month of worry. "Three years now? He came to Izuku's thirteenth birthday, that's the last time either of us saw him. He calls, Izuku, sometimes but …"

He'd known the boy's father was gone often, he hadn't known it was that bad. "Never you?"

She shook her head. "I think he has another family, somewhere, but … oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't have to tell you all of that …" she put her hands over her mouth, horrified at the overshare.

"It's okay. For what it's worth … I think he's a fool, and a bastard for not being here for you during this."

"Thank you. Thank you for saying so and for … for being here," she said, and embraced him with shaking arms. He pulled her close, comforting her as best he could. "I … I feel like I should know, you see stories on the news about moms of missing children and they said they knew, they knew their child was dead, and then the police found the body a few days later, or they knew they were alive and they turned up alive and well twenty years later in the Cameroun or something. But I don't … I don't know. I don't know if Izuku is alive, or if he's gone …"

"I don't think that's fair, I don't think …"

"I've tried reaching out to him, with my quirk – it's never been good at finding big things, but … I tried, and even with that, I have no idea if he's even alive …"

"Inko," he said softly, using her given name for the first time. "Inko, don't put that on yourself. The best people in the world are looking for him, we just have to … have to trust …" He couldn't finish that sentence. Trust what? They'd had weeks without news either way.

He didn't speak, just wiped her tears away with his thumb while trying not to start sobbing himself.

Shota didn't make a habit of making a fool of himself. And that meant keeping his mouth shut in areas where he knew that he knew nothing.

But the possibility had been in his mind for weeks now, and it seemed no one had thought of it. That was probably because there was something he was missing, not being a physicist.

Well, if nothing else, hopefully the physicists who'd been in conference all day and seemed about to pull their hair out could use a fool to break the tension.

"Isn't there a theory that our reality is not the only one? What if you sent Midoriya to the same location, but in another reality?" he asked the gathered scientists, addressing them for the first time.

Gianakos stared at him, blinking slowly, never lifting her head from the desk where she'd put her head to (badly try to) hide that she was about to cry.

So, he was a fool then.

"That's um. That's a theory, certainly," the snow-haired British profressor who'd called in remotely said after Leto translated for him.

"I think you're referring to the many-worlds theory. It was prevalent for a time, but recent data indicates it's unlikely. And even if we work with that model, that doesn't necessarily help us since the possible other realities would be literally endless …" Dr. Hashimoto, the head of the theoretical physics department at a national university started to explain, using a voice that was clearly reserved for especially slow students.

"No, wait," Gianakos said, slowly lifting her head from the desk. "Wait. Many-Worlds doesn't have to be true if … Um …"

She began to converse with the British professor in rapid, technical English, and erased a big chunk of calculations on the whiteboard at the end of the room and started to write out an entirely new set. "How much are you following, Thirteen?" Shota asked, but she motioned for him to wait.

A tense half hour passed discussing something in multiple languages. Shota waited patiently.

Abruptly, Gianakos ran towards him full tilt and threw her arms around him. After a moment of being startled, he hugged her back. Then she let go and hugged her mentor, who hugged her back with much less hesitation.

"Do you want the full explanation or the highlights?" Thirteen asked.

"Highlights, please."

"It's possible, if someone travelled back in time, they could have caused a branching timeline. There are several theories of time travel, obviously, but one of the schools of thought is that the course of history can never truly change, the best a time traveler could hope for was to create a parallel universe with their desired outcome. We don't know that time travel's possible, but we've theorized about some of the ways it could be achieved. With the right quirk it might be possible. If that's the case, and someone time travelled and created a parallel universe or universes, maybe Leto did what you're suggesting, and sent Izuku to the branch, or one of the branches." Thirteen summarized. Gianakos seemed certain of it.

"Can you recreate it?" Shota asked Gianakos point blank.

"It might take me time, but I'm sure I will," she said, looking fiercely determined. The British professor still looked skeptical, Dr. Hashimoto looked cautiously optimistic. "I'll have to train, I'll train as hard as I can. Plus Ultra! That is the saying, yes?"

"Yes, that's the motto."

Leto trained so hard. She trained every day until her body and mind were screaming at her.

She transported objects as far as possible and then transported them back, at one point even to space. She never lost an object, and it never came back damaged, other than a little frost on crate sent to Norway. The more she did it, the less exhausted she was after a long transport. Which was good, she needed to not be unconscious for three days when she went for Izuku – she didn't know what was waiting for her.

But any time she tried to do what she'd done, nothing happened. She'd go to the place where it had happened, and picture this place, and only this place, while straining to open a gate.

No gate was forthcoming.

She'd give up, she'd go home, she'd train more.

She got a picture of Izuku to show to people to indicate who she was looking for. She wrote a letter to him, explaining what happened and why it had taken so long to come for him, just in case she did lose consciousness when she got there, so he would know how sorry she was even before she woke up and could tell him herself. She carried both with her in a backpack which also held food and water (in case there was no civilization in the parallel reality she traveled to) whenever she made an attempt to go after him.

The fifth time she tried and failed to open the portal, she called Mr. Aizawa to apologize. "I'm sorry, sir, I'm so sorry, I just keep trying …"

"You'll get it," he told her fiercely, certainly. She clung to his certainty, trying to make it her own. "You've tried in the same place – have you tried doing it at the same time of day?"

"I don't see why that should matter, time of day doesn't factor into any of the equations."

"It matters to your psychological state."

Of course! She should have spoken to him sooner, he was a teacher, he'd taught probably hundreds of students how to use their quirks most effectively, he must have a wealth of knowledge about the psychology of it.

"I … hadn't thought of it. I can … try to recreate what happened, as closely as I can."

"Are you up to it?"

"Yes," she said, with a fraction of his fierceness, of his certainty.

"Then it's a good idea. Ask Thirteen if she can get some of the actors to help."

She was shaking. She shook every time she thought of that night.

But she was going to do it. She was going to go find Izuku.

Leto's heart pounded. Mr. Aizawa and Thirteen had offered to stay with her while she made this attempt, but she had thought their presence would give her too much courage, when she'd felt none of that that night.

She held her pack tighter to her, and took a look at the picture of Izuku she would use to show people who she was looking for. Assuming there were people over there and she wasn't going to show up in a horrible rat mutant world or something. No no, no fears in that direction, Leto.

"You sure this'll help?" the HUC actor standing in for her ex-boyfriend asked uncertainly. He bore a passing resemblance to Katzu which helped.

"Yes. I need to be in the same mental state."

"Okay, we'll do our best!" the young man playing Izuku said brightly. He didn't resemble Izuku very strongly, but he had Izuku's affect down, and it stabbed Leto in the heart with a metaphorical dagger seeing him smiling and wearing a costume so like Izuku's.

They started the scene all over again.

Leto lived through it all again, shouting improvised versions of the things she had back then. She forgot Japanese and then English all over again. Passersby stared in confusion, knowing they were witnessing a staged scene, and likely a staged scene of what, but had no idea what the purpose of it was.

"Izuku, down!" she called, while focusing on only one place, the first deviation from that night. Instead of trying to think of the beach where she'd meant to send Katzu, she thought only of this place, the very place she stood.

A wormhole started to open, a swirling portal of vibrant color. It shouldn't, unless Mr. Aizawa had been right all along. Especially since, given how much energy was draining out of her, it couldn't just be a bridge right back to here. Leto grinned, her fear and hurt and guilt instantly turning to elation. She directed the bridge to herself, and physically leaned into it.

She experienced all of the nausea and disorientation she always did when traveling on her own bridges, only worse.

She stumbled and fell right to the ground. She sat up, retching, but managed to keep everything down. She quickly looked around – the HUC actors were gone, and a totally different set of curious bystanders were now nearby! She'd done it!

She stumbled to her feet, deathly exhausted, but far too elated to do anything else. She fumbled in her pack and retrieved the picture of Izuku. "Hello, can someone please take me to the nearest police station? I need to find this young man," she asked the nearest person in as clear a voice as she could manage while holding up Izuku's picture, before promptly passing out.

Next up: Arrival

Leto arrives in the parallel reality to rescue Izuku, but how will the denizens of that reality react to her arrival?

Author's Note

I am a scientist, but not a physicist. I specialize in the squishier arts. But my understanding is that the evidence is very mixed on Many Worlds, and if it is true, it does not work like we imagine it in fiction, hence why I forewent it as an explanation in this story.

Also I'm probably a little unjust to Mr. Midoriya here. Maybe he calls all the time and it's just not included due to law of conservation of detail, but it is so weird to me he's never there and we never see him call, even when Deku's hurt really badly.