He was careless.

He was careless and cocky and he was paying for it.

The pain in his chest erupted.

"Agh!"

"Your place is not here… it is to go home."

A sinister red filled his vision.

THUD! THUD! THUD!THUD!THUD!THUD!

"Get offa me!"

He flailed and kicked, screaming protests and obscenities through bloodied teeth.

"Izuku!"

Pain erupted around his body, from the tips of his toes to the middle of his scalp.

Intense and searing, like a grease burn.

"Agh! Fu-!"

"Time to go home."

BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!

Izuku had something of a quandary on his hands.

He had woken in a room that was wholly unfamiliar and filled with a number of items that were highly illegal in all but one place in the world.

To be completely honest, the illegality of the situation was less concerning to him than not knowing where the hell he was.

Even more concerning than that was the fact that his arm was gone.

Again.

This was not okay.

This was not okay at all.

His kimono was gone and he was dressed in a gray gown.

He was wrapped in bandages as well.

Whoever's custody likely he was in, they likely didn't intend to kill him

Even so, they'd taken his arm.

…The prosthetic, of course. His organic arm was still firmly attached to his torso.

BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!BEEP!

He breathed in and closed his eye.

BEEP!BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

That beeping was still incredibly annoying.

There was a needle embedded into the arm that he still had, held down by tape.

And on the index finger of that arm, a weird clip.

He took note of the tube that ran from the former and the wire that ran from the latter.

He pushed the clip with his middle and ring finger before grabbing the tube with his teeth and pulling-

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…!

Okay, that made it worse.

The long continuous drone was far more annoying than the recurrent beep.

And he was bleeding.

All over the sheets of the bed that he was in.

Not great.

But he'd been through worse.

He figured he'd stop bleeding soon enough.

For now, let's just get the hell out of here and figure out where I am.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed before pushing himself off-

THUD!

"...Ow."

He was glad that the kids he had met earlier that day weren't around to see him fall out of bed.

He'd probably die from shame right then and there.

"According to the nurses, he's stable and resting. They turned the arm and the swords over to me. I'll bring them into the lab and see what we can garner after we check on him."

DING!

Tsukachi nodded, holding back a yawn as the elevator stopped on the seventh floor, depositing the several other riders and leaving the two detectives to ride up to the ninth floor.

He hadn't gotten any sleep in the past 50 hours, kept awake by a myriad of energy drinks and, at present, a hunger for justice for a boy that he hadn't even had a chance to see.

He was doing his best to hide it, but he was running out of gas.

He had been hoping to grab at least six hours of sleep before he had to go back to the precinct, having only just walked in through the door of his apartment when Tanuma called.

As soon as he heard the situation, he was behind the wheel of his car and bending at least several different traffic laws to get to Moltis General as quickly as possible.

He joined the police force to help people, healthy sleep schedule be damned.

DING!

Ninth floor.

They were there.

The doors opened and the pair stepped out, ready to check on the kid and be on their way.

"Young man, please! You're still incredibly hurt and bleeding all over the place!"

"No can do! I'm down an arm and I've got no clue who you folks a-"

THUD!

"Dammit! Why am I so clumsy today? And why does the ground seem closer?"

They were met with a strange sight.

Well, strange as far as they were concerned, seeing as neither of them were all that familiar with how Moltis General Hospital tended to operate.

Though could anyway really say that a nurse trying and failing to get a bleeding, stumbling green-haired child to stop… bleeding and stumbling down the hallway.

Tsukachi looked at Tanuma.

Tanuma looked back at Tsukachi.

Without words, the two did what needed to be done.

"What the- Who're- Hey! Let go of me!"

"Who the hell are you people?"

What a friendly young guy he turned out to be.

Though considering the fact that he was currently strapped to a bed and being scolded and bandaged up by the same nurse who had been attempting to halt him in the hallway, Tsukachi couldn't exactly blame the kid for being a bit prickly.

And judging from the easy, placating smile on Tanuma's face, his partner thought the same.

"I'm Detective Eizo Tanuma. That guy over there is my partner, Naomasa Tsukachi."

Tsukachi raised a hand.

"Hello there."

"Um, hey."

Having introduced himself, Tanuma continued.

"I was one of the people who found you and got you here. We'd just heard that you were out of the ER, so we came to see how you were doing and ask you some questions if you were awake, which you are."

Tsukachi watched as the boy's one open eye shifted from him to his partner several times.

In his gaze, Tsukachi noted a hint of confusion.

He could feel his eyebrow rise slightly.

Going by the nature of the boy's injuries, according to his partner, it wouldn't be too out-of-pocket to assume that he was a bit disoriented after waking up in an unfamiliar place and tracking enough blood through the hallway to send a shiver of sharks into a frenzy.

Normally, most people would accept that as it was and move on.

Tsukachi, however, was a man with a new case, no leads, no sleep, and hunger for justice.

There was something strange about the confusion in the greenette's eye.

To Tsukachi, it seemed less like he was confused about the situation he was in, and more confused about the words that Tanuma used to describe the situation.

Hm… interesting.

Either way, he figured he'd likely be met with a wall if he went fishing for more information on that subject, so he filed it away for later.

He was just gonna follow Tanuma's lead.

If he saw it, he just knew that his partner did.

There was a beat of silence, broken only by the nurse(who had quietly finished wrapping and securing the bandages on the boy's arm) taking her leave and closing the door behind her.

Another beat.

Clearly, the boy wasn't much for conversation.

Tanuma cleared his throat before he began to speak again.

"So, Midori-kun, like I just said, we'd like to ask you some questions to see if we could help you. Would you mind answering a few?"

The boy stayed silent for a moment, before offering a quick nod in response.

"Alright, so let's start something simple."

A nod.

"Do you remember your name?"

Another nod.

"Could you tell us your name?"

Yet another nod.

Tanuma gestured for the boy to go on.

He received a quirked eyebrow and a frown in turn.

"What?"

"Your name?"

"I can remember it."

"Can you tell us what it is?"

"I can."

"Okay, so… will you?"

"Will I… what?"

"Please tell us your name."

"Oh, for sure. Why didn't you just ask?"

Am I watching a skit?

"Listen close, because I hate repeating myself."

The two detectives nodded and leaned in a bit.

"My name is… Jugemu Jugemu Go-Kō-no-Surikire Kaijari-suigyo no Suigyō-matsu Unrai-matsu Fūrai-matsu Kū-Neru Tokoro ni Sumu Tokoro Yaburakōji no Burakōji Paipo Paipo Paipo no Shūringan Shūringan no Gūrindai Gūrindai no Ponpokopii no Ponpokonaa no Chōkyūmei no Chōsuke."

Silence.

Stunned silence.

Tsukachi looked at Tanuma.

Tanuma looked back at Tsukachi.

They both looked at the greenette in the bed.

He looked back at them with a completely straight face.

"Sorry, I stuttered."

That was a stutter?

"My name's Izuku Midoriya. It's nice to meet you."

The conversation after that was incredibly unenlightening.

Despite having the ability to joke when asked for his name, the conversation quickly devolved into confusion afterwards.

"Uh… I haven't been to school in like eight years. I'm a mercenary, I've been traveling."

"You're a what?!"

"I'm eighteen."

"Okay, real funny, Midoriya-kun. But we wanna help you, and for that we need our information to be as accurate as possible."

"I'm not joking!"

"So are you guys gonna give me my arm back after this? I wanna repair it and get back to hanging out with Bridget before tonight."

"You were with a friend then?"

"Yeah?"

"Where were you?"

"Southeast edge of The Colony."

"Colony? What colony?"

"The… Japanese Colony? The one that we're in right now?"

"Midoriya-kun, I've never heard of any place like that. We're in Bakura, Tokyo."

"Tokyo?"

The more questions they asked, the more confused both they and the boy became until eventually, the latter just stopped responding.

Realizing that they might've been overwhelming the boy, the two detectives bowed.

"Sorry, Midoriya-kun. You should get some more rest. The last thing we'd want to do is get you stressed out before your doctor even gets a chance to come see you."

Silence.

"We'll give you some more time to collect yourself. We hope you feel a bit better when we see you next."

They walked towards the door, Tsukachi reached it first and opened it.

"Hey. Tanuma-san… was it?"

That stopped them dead.

They turned back to see the green-haired lad looking their way, his one eye boring straight into them.

They looked back at him.

"Is there something you need, Midoriya-kun?"

The boy held his gaze steady as he asked one question.

An innocuous one really.

One that Tsukachi ended up forgetting about almost as soon as they left the hospital.

"What's today's date?"

What the hell happened to me?

It was all Izuku could think as he once again refused a meal offered to him by the nurse.

A nurse.

In a hospital.

He could barely recall the last time he had been in a hospital.

For the past seven years, if he wasn't able to heal naturally on his own, he'd be lucky enough to run into Dr. Faust almost immediately.

But to think he'd wind up in a hospital.

A hospital in Tokyo of all places.

It seemed almost like a really poor joke.

One that he'd tell Anji or Baiken after the two of them let him get drunk. The kind of joke that'd get him socked in the arm twiceover.

It was almost enough to make him laugh.

Or maybe cry.

He honestly wasn't sure what he should've felt.

October 27, 2147…

He'd gone back in time.

No, not even just back in time.

2147… and Japan's still here.

There are no gears.

There was no 'Divine Will'.

No Kingdom of Illyria.

No Japanese Colony.

He'd somehow wound up getting himself knocked into an entirely different timeline.

Well, no that wasn't quite right.

It had been a while, but he recognized the terminology that some of the doctors and nurses were throwing around casually.

Heroes.

Supervillains.

Quirks…

These were all terms that were significant to him a long time ago.

About seven years ago… to be exact.

He was in… his original world.

The one that he had, not even a week before, made the conscious decision to not to return in favor of living the life that he made for himself over a period of seven years.

"Midoriya-san. If you won't eat, we'll have to put you back on the drip."

He didn't want to eat.

He genuinely wasn't hungry.

Not only that, but he didn't like being spoon-fed and they refused to unstrap him from the bed.

Normally, the latter wouldn't have been a problem, but for some reason, he'd felt incredibly weak since he woke up several days before.

His body just felt… wrong.

If he had to compare it to something, he'd say it felt like wearing clothes that were three sizes too small.

It didn't hurt, it was just uncomfortable.

Like something was off.

His reach felt shorter, his strides lesser.

He felt off balance as well, though that was likely due to the fact that he wasn't used to moving around without his prosthetic.

And like that, he could only muster up the strength to move his limbs normally.

So unless they allowed him the chance to use his own arm, or Bridget and Baiken were hiding behind a curtain wearing the same uniforms as the nurses…

Ehehehe- Wait, no, stop.

There was no time to be a perv, he needed to figure a way out of his bonds.

Saying that he needed to pee wouldn't work.

He'd figured that out a day ago.

He shuddered slightly as he remembered the tube that they…

Ahem. Moving on…

He tried surreptition, that didn't work.

So obviously, that left confrontation.

"Hey, I'm not-!"

SLAM!

He never got to fully enact his plan, as the door to the room slammed open.

His gaze and the gaze of the nurse currently attempting to feed him snapped to the door.

In the doorway, there stood a lithe and tall woman with green hair and green eyes staring straight at him.

Izuku had no idea who the heck she was, but for some strange reason, he felt a sense unease about what was soon to come.

This unease only rose at the first words that came out of her mouth.

Words said not to him, but to the nurse at his side.

Words said with enough venom that Izuku felt sick to his stomach with each syllable that rolled off her tongue.

"What do you think you're doing to my son?"