Joe's Note: Okay so now we're going to be getting caught up with where the original story was by the end of the second chapter, which means that I've only wasted around eight thousand words with world building in this incarnation. Just kidding. Fleshing out the world - especially in a crossover - is never a waste in my opinion. At least when you're actually doing something different. To be honest, I sorta cringe and skim when I see stories doing the forty-seventh retelling of Izuku trying to save the bullied kid from Bakugo when he was five... at a certain point, you need to assume that people reading fanfiction have a bit of a grasp of the original product. I mean, I could have done a chapter focusing on the Avengers beating Thanos and energy being released or something but I chose not to because I figured that you all know how Endgame unfolded.
Dedications & Thanks: To Nicholas, Howard, Jade, Alexander, Tibor, Alonsis2, Daniel, Clark, Adrien, erlking, ridillin, Haematite, Charles, Jacky, Edward, Andrew, Roofcrawler, Wil, PbookR, Samuel, Mikey, Beverly, Daniel, Charles, Crygon20, Subtle, Christopher, Stephen, Fablesrogue, Morgan, Joseph, Jason, RileyWestfall, bloodylord, Marc, Ziryo, Chris, George, Koby, William, Devin, JJbelle, David, Gavin, TheTenthAncestor, Lookshy, Mauday, John, Roman, Warren, and Jess for sponsoring me on P-treon, and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.
After spending perhaps more time than was strictly advisable questioning Loki about the multiverse and her adventures in it, Izuku decided to give his brain some time to absorb all the new information that he'd received and said his farewells to Loki and Sigyn and especially Amora before making his way out of the park and heading for home. As much as he wanted to go back to home with Amora, she clearly had other company for the afternoon. Their plans could wait.
Or at least he was headed for home right up until an explosion rent the air, drawing Izuku's attention to where a cloud of smoke was rising from the Tatooin Shopping District. Bursting into a run, Izuku began making his way through the streets expertly, cutting down alleys to get to the fight as fast as possible. What he saw when he arrived shocked him.
Presumably this was the sludge villain who had been plaguing the neighborhood for weeks now. Or if not the particular sludge villain who had crossed All Might's path, it was definitely a mass of sludge with eyes that was up to no good. Surrounded by fire, it kept flailing with thick tentacles of greenish-brown goo, somehow managing to keep Death Arms and Kamui Woods at bay. Nearby, Backdraft was doing his best to put out the fires - or at least keep them from spreading - while Mount Lady stood at the mouth of the alley where everything was going down, nervously bouncing from foot to foot as she looked around wildly. There were two other heroes that even Izuku didn't recognize but before he could get excited about his good fortune - two completely new heroes to help fill out Volume 13 of his notebook collection - he took notice of the source of both the fire and the hero's reticence to make a move.
"Why aren't the heroes doing anything?"
"It looks like they've met their match. Plus the villain captured a kid. Things aren't looking good for the heroes." Pushing his way into the crowd a bit, the boy forced himself up onto his toes so he could get a better look. Sure enough, peeking out of the amorphous blob of sludge was a head of spiky blonde hair... and then the blonde turned his head enough for Izuku to catch sight of terrified red eyes.
The sludge villain had a hostage.
That hostage was Bakugo Katsuki.
"Talk about bad luck. That's the villain that All Might has been chasing for weeks now."
"I heard about that on the news. But if All Might's been chasing him, why isn't he here now?"
"Can someone call him or something?"
"Seriously, why hasn't he shown up to help the heroes?"
Someone was going to show up, right? A real hero? Maybe even All Might? Because as much as Katsuki tormented him, bullied him, and degraded his dreams of becoming a hero despite his quirkless state... despite even what he'd said and done to him a few days ago... Izuku didn't think he deserved to die. Nobody deserved that. Izuku continued to whip his head back and forth, desperately searching for someone. Anyone. Maybe even one of the Asgardians who he'd spent the afternoon talking to in the park. Amora could probably use her magic to make short work of the villain, to say nothing of Loki. Sigyn... might be able to take him as well? Honestly, he didn't know much about her. If she was married to Loki, though, she had to be powerful in some fashion in her own right. Surely they could do something to help, right? The park wasn't that far away. They couldn't be unaware of what was going on.
Perched on her stool in the gazebo in Endurfæðing Park, Incantare Amora looked away from Loki and Sigyn to let out a disgusted sigh as smoke began to rise over the city again. Humans were so destructive. And foolish. Undoubtedly some pathetic 'villain' was making trouble again, destroying property as he went about his mediocre dastardly deeds. Humans had no real concept of villainy anymore, she thought derisively. Now Thanos, he was a villain. Surtur was a villain. Angela was a villain. Some idiot running around downtown Musutafu destroying things and lighting them on fire? He was - at best - a nuisance. Back in the good old days, a single einherjar would have been enough to capture and detain what now took three or more human 'heroes' to defeat.
Caught up in reminiscing - and doing her best to actively ignore Loki's rambling that she'd tuned out several minutes ago - Amora didn't notice as Stormbreaker began to twitch.
Finally it dawned on him that nobody was coming. Nobody was going to save Kacchan. And so if he was going to be saved... well then Izuku would just have to do it himself! His notebook tumbling to the pavement, Izuku jetted forward toward the sludge villain, nimbly dodging between Death Arms and a baseball-themed hero as they tried to restrain his flight. Rushing forward as a cacophony erupted behind him, the heroes and the crowd all shouting at him to stop, Izuku's mind raced as he tried to come up with some sort of plan... any plan... now that he'd gone and involved himself in what was going on.
'What am I doing?'
'Why am I running?'
'Why can't I stop?'
'What do I do?'
'What would a hero do right now?'
Those questions and more swirled through Izuku's head but he pushed them away as he tried his best to focus on the problem in front of him. Clearly the sludge couldn't be punched into submission, otherwise Death Arms would have been able to free Kacchan. It couldn't be restrained, or else Kamui Woods would have been able to save the day. Backdraft might have been able to do something with his powers - maybe dilute the sludge enough that the villain would be unable to hold his form - but he was focused on the fires and Izuku had no way of imitating what the rescue specialist could do anyway.
Izuku's mind drifted back to the notebook that he'd left laying on the pavement. Even if he wasn't a pro hero with a sensational quirk to back him up, successful tactics would still remain the same from them to him. What would a pro hero do right now? Easy: distract the villain to try and manipulate him into opening up a weak spot that the hero exploit. How could he do that? Well, what about going for the eyes? Getting poked in the eye hurt an awful lot. The same was probably true even for a sludge villain, right?
Swinging his yellow backpack down off his shoulders, Izuku gave a war cry as he spun and launched the bag forward, hurling it with unerring accuracy directly into the villain's right eye. The villain recoiled with a cry of pain, in the process relaxing its grip on Katsuki enough that the blonde could wrench his head free and draw in a deep breath. "Kacchan!"
Now what? The sludge was thin and gooey, and he had the villain distracted. Maybe he could claw through it in specific spots, help Katsuki free one of her hands? If he could get even one hand free, he could press it against the villain's body and blow it straight to hell. That would solve the villain problem nicely, wouldn't it? As Izuku began scrabbling at the thick, viscous slime, Katsuki narrowed her red eyes at him. "What the hell? Why are you here?"
"I don't know! My legs... they just started moving!" Izuku continued to claw desperately at the sludge, pulling it away in small handfuls as he tried to burrow his way through to where Katsuki's arm was. Was the sludge getting thinner in that spot? Was it wishful thinking? Izuku had no idea but he had no other plan so he was pretty much stuck just going all out and hoping for the best at this point. "Kacchan, I couldn't just stand there and watch you die!"
Suddenly, Izuku found his body screaming at him and he instinctively reared back, raising his right hand high. Something heavy and wooden slapped against it, and he looked over to see Stormbreaker in his hand. The alley abruptly went silent save for the crackling of the fires started by Katsuki's explosions, even the villain staring at Izuku in silent awe. "What the hell? Is that... Stormbreaker?"
It was! Or was it? Was he just seeing things? Maybe the sludge villain had managed to grab him too and this was all just a hallucination brought on by lack of oxygen. Spinning Stormbreaker around so the axe head was facing the villain, Izuku slashed hesitantly at the smelly goo making up the villain's body. The gleaming metal head sliced through the criminal with ease, making the amorphous sludge blob cry out in pain as a chunk of his body fell away. "I can save you, Kacchan! Look! I'm worthy!"
"Shut up and chop faster!" Katsuki began struggling more aggressively, his hands peppering the villain with explosions as he took advantage of the villain's relaxed hold to try and wrench himself free once and for all. "And don't even think of trying to shoot lighting at this idiot, I'm still inside him!"
Oh! Right! Rearing back, Izuku brought Stormbreaker down again and again, carefully trimming away at the sludge that surrounded Katsuki's writhing body. Finally, Izuku had parred away enough of the villain's body that he could reach out with his free hand, somehow ignoring the constant stream of explosions flowing from Katsuki's palm as he grabbed his friend by the hand and yanked him free. Wrapping his arm around his friend's waist, he flexed his legs and launched himself backward away from the villain even as he brought Stormbreaker up high over his head. "Thunder... Smash!"
Lightning pierced down out of a cloudless sky as Izuku swung Stormbreaker forward, the slash guiding the bolts of electricity to their desired destination. Crackling bolts of energy crawled over the alleyway, tearing into what remained of the villain and superheating his body. With a series of pops, he exploded, splattering the steaming remains of his mass across the pavement and walls. And the it was over, and Izuku could breathe.
For all of a second or two. Within seconds, Katsuki was fighting his way free of his grasp and slamming a fist crackling with explosions into the side of his face, sending Izuku stumbling back a few steps until he used Stormbreaker to halt his reeling. "You idiot! You fucking... Deku! Why would you do something like that? Inko-obasan is going to kill you! Besides, I would never ask for a weakling like you to help me! And what the hell is 'Thunder Smash', you fucking otaku. It's not bad enough that you're evidently the new Thor, you need to go and rip off All Might at the same time? Have some damn originality with your super moves!"
A bit high on the twin thrills of defeating a villain on his own and being judged worthy by a powerful alien artifact, Izuku just gave Katsuki a bemused grin as he reached up to rub his surprisingly pain-free jaw. "You're welcome."
Before Katsuki could regroup and launch himself at Izuku again, there was a flash of greenish-yellow light and a crackling disc of eldritch energy snapped into existence around his feet on the pavement. Leaning forward, Katsuki pushed against the air to find that there was now a barrier between himself and Izuku, one that not even one of his explosions could penetrate. "Are you doing this? Because you might as well just take your lumps like a man, Deku. If I have to wait until later, it's just going to be worse for you."
Thinking back to all the other times that he'd seen magic of this exact color, Izuku shook his head as he glanced from Katsuki to the magical field and back. "Can you stop at my place on your way home and let my mother know that I'm alright? She'll probably have seen all of this on the news and, well, I have a feeling it'll be a bit before I get back home."
And then he fell through the energy, the smoldering alley disappearing from around him.
Thankfully he didn't fall too far or for long, landing with a grunt back in Endurfæðing Park. Scraggly trees? Check. Gazebo? Check. Amora and Loki and Sigyn? Check and check and check. So he'd been moved several blocks in a split second? That put some of the best teleporting quirks - or at least the registered ones that he knew about - to shame. Was there anything Amora's magic couldn't do? "I believe you have something of ours."
Planting the wide head of Stormbreaker against the ground, Izuku levered himself back to his feet before looking down at the hammer uncertainly. "Is it something of yours? Or something of mine? If the hammer thinks I'm worthy..."
"Then I suppose that makes you something of ours now too. Not that it's turned you into a proper Asgardian or anything, but... close enough." Loki closed the distance between them with a considering look on her face, before reaching out to grab at one of his arms. He blushed darkly as she started at the wrist near Stormbreaker, gently squeezing at his arm as she ran her hand all the way up to his shoulder and then inward to rest on his chest. "Thank the Allfather that Thor took care of the worst of Earth's enemies before his run-in with Galactus. You may be worthy, but you feel like you'd blow away in a stiff breeze."
Amora gave an uncaring shrug at that, making her way over to Izuku's unoccupied side and... curling herself around his body? His blush darkened at that, the world spinning a bit as the blonde brought her head down to rest on his shoulder. Two cute girls were touching him. One cute girl was leaning on him. What was he supposed to do in a situation like this? Amora had occasionally touched him in the past but nothing like this! "Okay, so he doesn't look like much, I'll give you that... but he's evidently worthy. That's good enough for me."
Taking a step back, Loki eyed him speculatively for a moment before letting out a soft snort. "He looks like he's about to faint. You definitely have you work cut out for you with him."
"Can you blame him for being overwhelmed?" Amora peered up at Izuku for a moment before shooting a glare at her friend. "He just went from a quirkless nobody to someone with the power of a god. And he's in the presence of three goddesses, at least one of which is going to be his new girlfriend. Probably me. With what I've learned about him over the past few weeks, I think he'd do terribly with a tsundere like you and Sigyn is the goddess of fidelity after all."
It took a few seconds for those words to fully penetrate Izuku's head... and then he fainted.
