Joe's Note: If you notice similarities to anyone else's fanfics with the next chapter or two, it's unintentional but wholly unavoidable. The Musutafu area police department isn't terribly built up in either the anime or the manga, requiring those of us who use them to either reinvent the wheel each time or scavenge from each other when we write. With that said? If you haven't read Friendly Foreign Dimensional Exchange Student Spiderman! by Zaru yet, go give it a read. Out of the multitude of Spider-Man/My Hero Academia crossovers out there, it's easily the best one that I've read so far... and I have enough free time at work that I'm pretty sure that I've read all the ones worth reading.
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 , and making it easier for me to spend more of my time writing.
Humming softly to herself as she hovered a few inches above the uncomfortable metal folding chair they'd given her in the interrogation room, Carol ran her fingers over the gauntlet-mounted computer that was part of her Starforce armor and made yet another subtle adjustment to the frequencies it was scanning for before running the tracking algorithm for the seventh time. And for the seventh time, it came back with the same result: she was the only source of Infinity Stone-related energy in the general vicinity. Considering that they hadn't taken her altogether too far from the scene of her 'crime' to get to a police station - at least by the standards of her armor's sensors - the point where she'd entered their reality should have still been well within range of her suit. Namely because the entirety of the plan fell well within the range of her suit's scanning capability. So even if they'd hauled her halfway across Japan - or was she in China, she really needed to ask someone about that - the rift should still register on her suit's sensors. Should still register on said sensors as a source of Infinity Stone-related energy, presumably the Space Stone at a minimum but likely in combination with the Reality Stone, the Time Stone, or both.
And yet, it wasn't.
Which meant one of two things.
One: the sensors in her suit were damaged and would require repairs that she didn't have the resources and knowledge to effect. Which was highly unlikely given that she could still scan the entire planet in a single go, and she could detect herself with them.
Two: the rift had sealed itself back up after spitting her out, meaning that she was stuck here.
Carol wasn't entirely sure which of those two options was the greater evil.
As far as places to be stuck went, her current situation wasn't entirely terrible. It wasn't a world without shrimp, or a world where the Nazis won World War II, or a world where the Snap hadn't been reversed. And she had used her locator beacon to pin down that she was definitively in Japan, not China, which was cool. She loved sushi. Ramen had been a food group during her time in Colorado Springs despite Mitchel Hall serving decent enough food for dinner each night. And visiting the Tokyo Skytree might be fun. Would she get in trouble for sitting on top of it to take in the sights? Having and using superpowers seemed to be strictly regulated around here. Maybe she'd enjoy the scenery from the observation deck.
At the same time, based on what she was finding online, this world seemed to be remarkably stunted for being significantly in the future from her perspective. She'd left her reality in 2025 and it was over two hundred years in the future on this version of Earth, and yet the cars and cell phones and computers looked almost identical to when she'd left her Earth for deep space again. Scarily enough, her vintage 90s Kree armor was quite possibly the most advanced technology on the planet, as best she could tell from an admittedly limited sample size. But again, it could be worse. A lot worse.
Continuing to navigate through her new reality's version of the comparatively primitive - from a Kree's perspective, at least - Internet, Carol raised an eyebrow as she found herself staring at... hero rankings? Evidently here, the Billboard magazine wasn't just content to rank popular music for the masses, they also ranked heroes. Topping the list was a massive blonde man named All Might, followed by Endeavor, Hawks, and... Best Jeanist? Carol bit her lip to avoid laughing at the sight of a man wearing nothing but denim, including a cowl made out of what looked like the waistband of a pair of pants. This world was certainly... creative... when it came to heroes' powers and identity, she would give it that.
Continuing onward, Carol made her way past names like 'Edgeshot' and 'Gang Orca', and then even further past the 'Wild, Wild Pussycats' as she slowly scrolled all the way to the end of the abridged list of the top fifty heroes in Japan. Unsurprisingly, there wasn't a single familiar name on the list. She switched over to the American rankings and then the overall international leader board and came up just as blank. She hadn't expected as much, really, but she'd hoped to discover that at least some of her friends had existed in this particular reality at some point and had left behind legacy heroes who continued the good fight for them. But no. There was no sign of Captain America's shield, Iron Man's signature technology, or... hell, Bruce was quite possibly immortal. If he existed in this reality, he would likely still be on the charts to say nothing of any children he might have had. Maybe even a descendent of Scott Lang and Hope van Dyne, as she'd passingly hoped the giant woman at the crime scene was. Not a single fragment of her old friends remained here.
What to do, what to do? The rift was gone, but she wasn't without options. Her suit had been able to connect to some version of the Kree mainframe when she tried, meaning that she could always flee for the familiar comforts of the Empire if she wanted. Especially given that here, she hadn't burned that particular bridge by waging war against them on the Skrulls' behalf. Speaking of which, if the Kree existed here, there was a good chance that the Skrull likewise did. She could seek out her erstwhile allies, maybe help them rise up against their Kree oppressors all over again. Assuming, of course, that things had unfolded similarly in this reality. Maybe in this reality, the Skrulls were still living peacefully on their own world adjacent to the Kree Empire and there was a whole society waiting for her to explore it.
But while she could do those things... what should she do? No matter where she went, she'd essentially be reestablishing herself from scratch. She owed no loyalty to anyone or anything in this reality; she was a stranger in a strange land. Would it really be so bad to take the Boy Scout-approved path and hug a metaphorical tree? Stay here, wait to see if anyone managed to respond to the distress call that she'd sent as she plunged through the rift, and spend the intervening time helping clean up the super-powered crime that evidently pervaded this world?
...with her impressive powers, it would be impossibly easy to climb her way into the top ten of the Hero Billboard Chart.
...wait. What would her superhero name be? Even after nearly thirty years of fighting the good fight and protecting the helpless, she'd somehow managed to avoid going by anything other than Carol Danvers.
...and what would her epithet be? Endeavor was the Flame Hero and All Might was the Symbol of Peace. What would that make her?
...what would she claim her quirk was?
Wanting to distract herself, Carol began digging through the Internet in search of more information about the All Might fellow who seemed to be so popular in this version of Japan. Thanks to some of the algorithms that she'd 'liberated' from her Skrull allies and later the Avengers, brute forcing her way into restricted databases was almost laughably easy and she slowly began to assemble a fuller picture of the Symbol of Peace. At the same time, the more she learned about him, the more questions formed in her head. There was something about him that just... didn't add up.
There was a knock on the interrogation room door and then it swung open to reveal her third interrogator of her stay. Carol was honestly getting rather tired of repeating herself but since she wasn't going to punch her way out of custody or anything, it was a necessary evil. Dropping down to sit in her chair properly, she cleared the holograms hovering over her forearm with a wave of her hand. "So, now who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"
"My name is Fukuda Botan and I am the police chief of this precinct." Carol raised an eyebrow as he sat down opposite her at the table and opened a folder; finally, she was getting somewhere. "You've told my men a very interesting story, Miss Danvers. Surely you can understand why we're hesitant to believe it."
Carol cocked her head to one side as she gestured to the papers that Fukuda was slowly spreading across the table in front of him. They were obviously reports of some kind and based on the fact that they were done in at least two distinctly different handwritings, she could only assume that they were the result of her earlier questioning. "C'mon, you live in a world where eighty percent of the population has some sort of superpower. How weird is the idea that I'm an alien from outer space who also has powers?"
Coughing into his hand, Fukuda peered over the top of his glasses at her. "Well, for starters this would be our first contact with life from another planet. At least as far as I know. There's also the fact that you look strikingly similar to a human for someone who's trying to use an intergalactic origin as an excuse for violating several quirk usage laws."
"To be fair, it's been a while since the Kree have visited C-35. Anyone who might have met one of my kind would be long since dead by now." Carol reached up, running one hand through her hair as she stared at him in exasperation. "As for looking human? I don't suppose you're a Star Trek fan? Convergent evolution, Infinite diversity in infinite combinations, and all that?" Fukuda looked distinctly unimpressed with her and Carol rolled her eyes. "Fine, I'm only half-Kree. My father was a human named Joseph Danvers and my mother was a Kree champion named Mari-Ell. That said, Kree look almost identical to humans on the outside. Except for the fact that they're blue, that is. Which wouldn't be that out of place on Earth these days from what I've seen, would it?"
Fukuda peered down at his assembled notes again for several seconds, as if the papers held some great secret or answer, before finally looking back up at her. "At the end of the day, you could be telling a rather astonishing truth or an extraordinarily convoluted lie. Who you are, where you're from, and where you go after we're done with you aren't my problem. The fact that you broke the law in my precinct is. Given the nature of the incident, normally we'd be willing to sweep your quirk usage under the rug. That Bakugo lad, for instance, isn't going to be charged for any of the damage that he caused while trying to escape the villain. But while such things are obviously at our discretion, I'm reluctant to grant you any sort of leniency because you show absolutely no remorse for having broken the law today."
Carol let out a faint snort at that, leaning back and stretching her arms over her head as she stared at the older man incredulously. "That's because I absolutely don't regret what I did to end up in here. None of the heroes on the scene were equipped to save that boy. I was. So I did. That's what heroes do."
That earned her a raised eyebrow from Fukuda on the other side of the table. "So you see yourself as a hero already, then? Despite your utter lack of professional qualifications or any backing from the Japanese government?"
"The Kree are a race of noble warrior heroes. It's literally in my blood." How Carol managed to keep a straight face through reciting the lie that she'd echoed for nearly half a decade in the Kree's service, she had no idea... but what kind of self-respecting alien wouldn't talk about her own people in a positive way? "Besides, considering that I single-handedly took down a villain that your local heroes couldn't touch? Something tells me that you guys really can't stop me if I decide to keep being a hero. Which I'm going to for as long as I'm here." Considering she had no idea exactly how she'd ended up in the future of an alternate reality or how to get home? That was potentially quite some time.
Letting out an exasperated sigh, Botan turned to the wall that she'd long ago figured out was a two-way mirror and gestured to her emphatically. He stayed in that position until the door knob turned, the door swinging open wildly as a positively massive man with distinctive tufts of blonde hair standing straight up from the front of his head strode into the room. Carol sat up a bit straighter; all bravado aside, she'd long ago learned not to underestimate her opponents and All Might could prove a formidable one if she didn't play her cards right. "I am here... with an offer you might find appealing!"