Matthew Murdock was roaming the streets of Hell's Kitchen when he felt… a stir. It was like a pulse of unseen energy billowing out of focus. Also, it was oppressive and it made his already acute senses go nuts. The hairs on his body stood on end. His ears rang, and his sense of smell and taste malfunctioned. Whatever the origin of the stir was, it reminded him of the scent of pressed flowers and the sharp taste of bitter gourd.
If he didn't have the training, Matt guessed that he would have fallen down on the ground, half-catatonic by now.
Curious, Matt followed the source of the pulsing energy. His journey led him just outside of Hell's Kitchen and in a secluded alley.
However, just as he was nearing the source, his senses told him they were not alone. A group of people were moving about, in droves and in a manner so distinct, Matt gripped his weapon of choice, the nunchaku, in his hands harder. Hand, definitely, he thought.
Agents of The Hand moved very distinctly. They moved quick and airy. To the untrained and inexperienced, it would be close to impossible to notice this. Someone like him? It was cakewalk.
He may be blind but his experience and senses more than compensated that disability. He didn't need sight to [See]. There were at least a dozen agents, three of which were hauling a woman into a van. Matt hasn't been noticed yet. Good.
"I don't know what you guys are up to but I don't approve of it."
Fighting ensued but like Daredevil would lose to peons, right?
When all was said and done, Matt was left with… basically an unconscious woman in the middle of a secluded alley.
It took a couple of days for Mirajane to understand what happened: she was in a dimension/reality that was like Edolas but isn't. For one thing, [Fioren Script] was referred to as [English] here. [Magical Vehicles] were called [Cars] that ran of a number of different energy sources that wasn't [Self Energy]. There was also a huge lack of magically competent individuals despite the presence and prevalence of magical energies.
Mirajane compared this world to Edolas, a kingdom that used innovation and gadgets. But unlike Edolas, this land didn't use magic as its main power source. Speaking of which, she thought. electricity, oil, heck even the sun could be harnessed as energy sources. Why couldn't Edolas do the same?
In any case, Mirajane was in a world that was so different from Edolas and her own that she found herself at a huge disadvantage. As much as she was thankful to her good Samaritan for taking her in, Mirajane knew that she should be looking for ways to return home.
To do that, she needed information and resources.
Fortunately, information was freely given and available in this world—thanks to a concept known as the [Internet]. With a simple series of button pushes into a thingamabob known as a laptop, one could know anything about the world. However, Matt warned her not to believe everything in the internet.
Matthew 'Matt' Murdock. Mirajane was thankful that it was Matt who found her. The man with disability took everything Mirajane told her in stride: how she was from a different world and that she had been fighting in a war to protect her homeland. He even let her stay at her place.
Of course, being stuck here, Mirajane wanted to go home. For all she knew, time spent here could be time wasted trying to protect Magnolia. There's also the off-chance that maybe, time spent here was a minute percentage of a percentage of a second there, who knows. But Mirajane didn't want to be here any longer than she had to.
She needed to find a way home. Stat.
Despite information being readily available, Mirajane found that certain information tended to be very scarce. A simple Google search about interdimensional travel and about magic gave her information she either already knew in passing or just the basics. Also, a good chunk of the available information were either outright lies or may be information that reinforced the idea that [Magic] was really different here.
Any expert she was able to find online were either literature critics, sci-fi enthusiasts, some people called nerds, and scholars (called scientists here) who didn't entertain her questions. The most serious ones who entertained her questions (and outright didn't laugh at her or called her crazy) were a trio of scholars named Erik Selvig, Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis. They spoke of theories and assumptions that was outside the proficiency of the platinum blonde. They also tried to explain it her in simple chunks but it took her quite a while to understand what they were saying.
It was nice to find someone who appeared to know their stuff but every time Mirajane brought out how she was not of this land, she would hear Darcy and Jane's annoyed sigh from the other side of the phone call. Also, conversations between them and Mirajane led to nowhere because long talks about dimensional travel ended with all parties involved agreeing that so much energy would be needed in order to tear open a whole between the barriers that separated realities. Should the four even manage to successfully create a dimensional portal, it would not be a guarantee it would lead to Mirajane's home.
That hurdle did not stop Mirajane from going home. Actually, Mirajane tried to suggest that maybe she could use her connection to Fairy Tail's Tenrou Island as an anchor to get her home but the three scholars shot it down because they cannot take the risk of harming Mirajane.
Mirajane wanted to say that she would be fine, and she's been through worse but Matt reminded her that they were the experts here.
That left Mirajane still stuck. She had a vague idea of how to get home but she she had no idea how to properly execute it.
With nothing left to do, Mirajane decided to do the next best thing: get to doing something. Like a job. And earn a salary so that she could get resources.
Let's not forget that Mirajane's freeloader status: she siphoned off of Matt's money. Once Mirajane learned how to use a telephone, she became aware of using too much of Matt's hard-earned money after seeing his phone bill.
To get into perspective, a loaf of bread in Magnolia costs around 300 Jewels, maybe 500 if it is high quality. Here, the average loaf of bread costs around two dollars so that means a dollar is around 150-250 Jewels. The average meal in a restaurant for one costs around twelve to twenty dollars. That means an okay-ish meal costs around 1800 Jewels in this world and that's way too intense. With the same number of jewels in her home world, a pair could already be full at a three-star restaurant.
That phone bill had three digits and two decimal points: that's a lot. Granted, Mirajane's mindset with money was that of a tourist who compared prices between her home country and the country she is visiting, but in her opinion, living here costs a lot. Mirajane's appearance in Matt's life was a huge economical stress. Just on food expenses alone, Matt would be spending double the amount of resources just to keep them from getting hungry.
She needed to be independent, or at least, contribute something (preferably monetary) to the person who let her stay in his apartment and use and consume his goods.
Also, she needed resources for her own expenses, like toiletries and clothes, and that longshot plan of travelling back to Earth Land. Matt has done so much for her already, but at this point, she was being depended of him now. And Mirajane hated being dependent.
This world did not have a guild or an organization called Fairy Tail so Mirajane couldn't even impersonate this world's version of herself. The closest thing to a Mirajane Strauss was some weird company that dedicated their entire effort in making custom straws who had employee twins named Mira and Jane. Everything is so different even the Heartfilia Konzern never existed, not even in the annals of history. She had no money in her name, nor did she have any information about this world's version of herself.
Mirajane asked Matt how she could get a job here but even Matt was at a disadvantage because Mirajane is an alien both literally and in the eyes of the law. Of course Matt could call Mirajane a refugee, but that's too much of a stretch already. Much as Matt was great in his job as a lawyer, law school didn't prepare him how to help a literal alien in getting employed. Of course he could bend certain rules for her, exploit loopholes and such but Mirajane placed her foot down and told him that she doesn't want him making compromises with his morals and beliefs.
Still, that left Mirajane without a job and without a means of getting employed. Forget resources, Mirajane can't even land a job.
So, if an opportunity won't open for her, maybe she should just force one to appear.
Luckily, the world was conspiring something for her benefit that day.
In the Xavier Mansion, Danielle Moonstar dreamt.
In that dream, a girl with pink skin and dragonfly-like wings was down. A brunette with claws like Wolverine but two in each of her hands and one on each of her foot was fighting what looked like a blue-haired terminator she-alien that had somehow managed to disembowel her five times already.
Dany was beside a blonde girl who had two fingers pressed on her temple.
Wolverine and a man wearing a tight suit with a huge skull design in his torso were fighting what looked like a cloaked goblin. The weird, alien-looking, dual bladed spear thing had been knocked out thanks to the appearance of Wolverine's ally but even 2v1 and weaponless, the cloaked goblin overpowered the two.
A dragon-tailed demon was fighting an alien that looked like the Hulk and the Thing had an evil, axe-wielding clone baby.
All around, alien cyborg beings that emerged from the tear in the sky were wreaking havoc. Raining down rays of death.
In that dream, the blonde screamed in pain. Dream Dany and this girls were... allies, right? In the middle of New York, the two were up against a blue-skinned, female skinhead in a hoodie. The lady smiled, but her smile was like that of a predator. Her lips moved but Dany couldn't make out the words she was saying until she heard something that chilled her to the bone.
"We're coming..."