Ah, a school festival. How freeing, how relaxing, how iconic to the high school experience!... I think. To be honest none of the schools in the States that I've been in have had anything remotely close to a Japanese festival in scope. It was kind of a bummer but oh well.
I'll just write a bit of Eri being adorable to cheer everyone up.
"And over there we have the cafeteria. Lunch Rush is an amazing hero who uses his quirk to feed the hungry at incredibly fast rates! If you're ever hungry just ask him and he'll make you something yummy." Izuku continued his tour of the U.A campus which Eri would soon call her second home for the near future. The young unicorn paid attention and drooled a bit at the mention of delicious free food.
"The rest of you still have to pay…" Izuku glared slightly at the latter since he knew that some of them *Cough KazumaAquaMegumin *Cough would take advantage of any mention of free food. "My homeland or not, we're still guests here."
"Did you already forget that we're rich? It's not like we need handouts anymore...Right, you two." Kazuma corrected his leader while giving the two girls a glare of his own. Megumin he could understand since she spent pretty much all her life in abject poverty. But Aqua was just a lazy bum sometimes...And this was coming from the former hikineet.
"You're thinking something unforgivable again aren't you hikineet. I'll make you regret that later, you're lucky that mini Eris is here right now or I'd-" Whatever the blue thing was about to say was abruptly interrupted by a shout from the distance. It would seem that a few of the U.A students finally noticed who was walking around the campus.
"Holy shit is that Midoriya?! He really did come back to life!"
"What about All Might? If Midoriya's here then where's he?!"
"What about all of those beautiful girls? They look like they came straight out of a fantasy novel."
"Maybe we should let Eri-chan see the class A dorms next, can you guys take her there while I deal with these students? I don't think she is quite ready to deal with this many...Excited people at once." Maybe she would later, but right now Eri was still fresh from her experiences with Chisaki, she still needed time.
"You got it aniki! Try not to crush their worldview too much this time." Kazuma asked for the impossible while happily following Izuku's orders. He did not want to be around to see the mob riot that was guaranteed to form from any questions Izuku might answer.
"Easier said than done. Half of their questions are probably going to be about...Well, the afterlife so not changing their world views is a bust." Izuku muttered and turned to face his fate. He was surprised that the crowd actually slowed down before reaching him and just kinda stood and stared at Izuku for a moment before someone was brave enough to walk up and ask a question.
"M-Midoriya-san, what happened?" Now, wasn't that the question of the century. It carried quite a bit of weight despite, or perhaps because of how vague it was. "They told us a little bit over the news but...We could tell that it wasn't everything. Please, a lot of us are just worried, y'know."
"...You're Awase-san right? Sorry if I got your name wrong, our classes barely interacted before I died and it's been two years for me." The boy seemed surprised that Izuku remembered his name but shook it off quickly to pay attention. "Well, all the stuff they said so far is probably true, I died during the villain attack at the training camp and was sent to another world."
"What I'd like to know is who, or what sent you there, why did they send you, and more importantly, how have you come back? For something to have enough power to bring back the dead…" A girl this time...Shiozaki if Izuku's memory was right spoke up.
"They'd have to be a god. Is that what you're thinking?" Izuku got a cautious nod as a reply, though he could tell that there was something deeper there. "Well, to answer your questions in order: I was sent to another world by the goddess of fortune Eris, who chose me because I died as a hero and she had jurisdiction over this world's version of Japan." Izuku casually revealed the existence of gods, multiverse theory, and actual isekai nonsense in a single sentence.
"The world I was sent to was at war against a demon king and the gods of that world were looking for champions to take him down for centuries. As it turns out, centuries worth of misunderstandings piled up, and through several unusual circumstances I managed to end the war early, within two years of Belzerg time, and chose to come back to this world, along with a few other gifts, as my reward for bringing peace to Belzerg." Only to reveal that he was a world-class hero that saved an entire country with his next breath, not allowing the students to process much of anything.
"As for the whole, reviving the dead thing...It's honestly not that rare of an ability. You need quite a bit of power and skill to pull it off sure, but even a magical journeyman like myself can pull it off with enough creativity." Ok, Izuku calling himself a journeyman was a bit of a stretch but his point still stood.
There were the classic resurrections powered by gods of course. But Magic also allowed for advanced necromancy that created undead who were almost indistinguishable from living beings. Druids were capable of reincarnating the dead into new bodies. And even alchemists like himself could reconstruct a body back to perfect health, the only issue came later since the soul might have moved on by the time you got the body back together.
Reviving the dead was a miraculous ability, yes, but not as much of an impossible feat as most people thought it was. Even that chump Chisaki could do it. "If you want to meet Eris-chan, she was the silver-haired woman that I was walking with before you guys arrived. The blue-haired one is Aqua-chan, the goddess of water. And eventually, we'll have Wolbach-chan visit, she's the goddess of sloth and formerly of violence."
"...You're awfully close to them considering they're actual goddesses. Is there a story there?" Another 1B student asked in a teasing tone, she was the one who could split her body into multiple floating pieces. Setsu-something, Izuku's mind supplied but couldn't quite get the name right.
"That's a bit more private but yes, we are all quite close with one another. And before anyone asks, All Might isn't here right now. He still has to take care of a lot of paperwork involving his hero duties, old sponsors, and businesses that he was associated with before he died. Ah, and he came to Belzerg for the same reason I did, if you were wondering." That they could have guessed, in their minds, if a relative nobody like Izuku was selected then of course All Might would be chosen.
Poor sweet naive summer children. They'll figure out the real reason soon enough. "Now if you don't mind, I still have a lot of stuff to do. I and my friends from the other world are going to help out 1A with their culture festival ideas so you guys can look forward to that." Excitement took over the group of students. The idea of otherworldly heroes(and goddesses apparently) working on stuff for the festival...It would make this festival something to remember.
'Well, that went surprisingly well. It's almost like this is a school for heroes and the best students in the country.' All that time in Belzerg surrounded by chaotic good/neutral adventurers probably did something to Izuku's expectations. 'I'll just have to readjust my standards for normal while I'm here.' Izuku was nothing if not adaptable.
"I wonder how Kota-kun and the Pussycats are doing? I should probably contact them soon, maybe the school can help me with that...Ah right! Melissa-chan too! All Might said she had a rough time after my death, I should call her when I get back home." Izuku had a lot of calls to make and a lot of catching up to do with those people and more.
'You know what? Forget a phone call.' The emerald hero smirked and pulled out his portal gun. Why call when he could just visit at any time? Now he just needed the right coordinates and he and the party could go whenever they wanted. Plus, his party had wanted to meet the woman who created the Full Gauntlet that inspired his current armor ever since Izuku told them about her.
'Showing Eri around I-Island would also be a great experience for her. Maybe I can even get her access to the next I-Expo. I'm sure that if All Might got a pass for two last time I could pull off the same.' A smile stayed on his face on his way to the new dorms. Apparently, they were built as a response after the summer camp and Kamino incidents.
Thinking about how it would be for his entire class to live in one place like that...This was going to be a treat. He opened the door to 1A's dormitory and was immediately met with a chaotic cacophony of noise. From Aqua's usual crying, Kazuma's incredulous yelling, Darkness' usual moans of barely hidden masochism, and finally his old classmate's yells of horror after having to deal with the prior people for any length of time without Izuku around to mediate.
"...At least Eri-chan looks like she's having a blast." She was jumping to and fro, eyes wide, lips twitching, and practicably vibrating in place in excitement. The sheer amount of acceptance, happiness, warmth and overall positive energy around her was doing wonders for the child's mental state.
"This place is so loud and...Fun! I think? Everyone bounces off each other but with words instead of knocking each other around...Most of the time. Is it always like this here?" Her excitement was infectious or perhaps she was infected with it by the insanity around her? Either way, it seemed to do some good for the little one and it brought a smile to Izuku's face.
"Basically, whenever you get people with such different personalities but with similar ideals, you tend to get fun chaos like this. We're all pretty much friends here so there's a lot of that going on, or at least that's how I remember it from my time here. I hope that they've been taking care of you properly while I was gone." He glared a bit at the more questionable members of both class A and his own party.
"I kept the blue thing away from her for the most part. Aqua-chan helped teach her how to draw but I stepped in when she tried to make her sign an Axis cult form. I also kept the purple ball kid away from her so don't worry." Kazuma reassured Izuku, his fellow adventurer in green has a protective streak when it came to little sister types.
"For the last time Kazuma-kun it was just a junior membership form! All of the benefits of joining with none of the downsides until the twenty-year grace period is done. What more could you want?!" Izuku held back a sigh at the attempt to indoctrinate Eri into a cult...Though in all honesty, it wasn't such a bad idea.
"Let me read that contract." Izuku would at least give it a look to see if it was legitimate. "...This reads like one of those scam emails used by those 21st-century insurance vendors. But the terms seem rather reasonable actually." It just said that Eri would make small, daily offers of foodstuff and wine to Aqua and attempt to follow the core tenets of the Axis cult: Embrace freedom, treat others equally, share art and beauty freely, and the aforementioned offerings…
"Huh, this actually isn't that bad. Still, we should let Eri-chan grow up first and let her make the decision herself when she's mature enough to understand the consequences." Not that there were many admittedly. The benefits of joining(blessings of protection, water divination, and a guaranteed spot in Aqua's heaven) heavily outweighed them.
"See! At least our leader is a smart and reasonable person, unlike a certain hikineet that refused to even read the damn thing!" Aqua shouted in indignation mixed with happiness that someone finally gave her religion a shot. The smile grew even wider when Izuku signed the paper himself since he saw no real downside to it.
"Wait she's actually a goddess? I mean she totally looks like one, but that personality…" Kaminari said only to be immediately pestered by the goddess he scorned who pelted him with globs of water. "Hey stop! Ah! Why do those hurt so much?! They're just a bunch of water balls, they should vaporize on contact...Ah, crap." Stupid he may be but even Kaminari knew that pure water was an insulator. His electricity wasn't going to help him out with this one.
Aqua's saccharine smile was the last thing he saw before he made the very intelligent decision of running away at top speed.
Luckily for him, the goddess of water did not follow. "Not worth running. Yo Rikido-kun was it? You guys got any good chips here?" She asked, using Sugar Man's first name to avoid confusion with Kazuma. Making homemade chips and such back in Belzerg was nice and all. But there was something about those cheap knock-off chips sold in a local convenience store that couldn't be replicated…
It was probably the MSG.
"Looks like Aqua-chan's already made herself at home. If she ever gets too out of hand just find either Kazuma-kun or me and we'll keep her from going too far. This is a nice place, by the way, it reminds me of our own place, just taller and not as wide." The medieval-style mansion they lived in was wider but only had two floors due to the technological limitations of the setting.
Before Izuku came along that is, Axel would be getting their first ten+ story buildings in the coming months.
"Right, you're super rich now. I keep forgetting that, you said you owned a city right? I wasn't imagining that was I?" Ochako still had swirls in her eyes every time the subject came up...And a crimson face whenever she remembered Eris' words and suggestive tone when they first met. The young woman's mind went wild with ideas every time she thought about it.
"I'm the co-ruler of the city along with Darkness, we both have titles of nobility along with it so technically we do own the land. Most of the buildings and businesses are privately owned by the people of the city though." This had changed somewhat since Izuku made an effort to buy off and overhaul a few industries.
The farms, for example, were bought from their former owners for fair prices and changed to use the land more efficiently. Some private farms still existed but those who were too old or couldn't be bothered to adjust their farming practices were given the option to retire in relative wealth instead.
Not many poor subsistence farmers would refuse such an opportunity.
"Don't forget the partial owner of the Crimson Demon village thanks to that school you built and Yunyun-chan's inheritance. Ah, and you can consider Alcanretia an ally!" So all in all Izuku and his party had three cities at their back more or less. What the Crimson Demon village lacked in population they made up for in magic.
"Speaking of that world, have you all contacted your parents about visiting? If they agree then they can just come here and I'll transport you all there. I'll make sure that Iris-chan gives you all a proper welcome to Belzerg. We'll prepare a festival celebrating the first official meeting between people of both sides!" The fact that their old classmate could just do that on a whim still caught them by surprise but they answered him anyway.
"Yeah man, most of us got the go-ahead already. My folks sounded really excited about the idea...And they wanted to take a break from Japan for a while considering what happened." Sero answered first, it would seem that a good majority of everyone's families wanted some kind of escape away from the recent chaos.
To them, going on a, quite literal magical adventure to a new world with their children sounded wonderful. Especially when they had the guarantee of protection from All Might himself. And a young hero who was apparently his protege and was just as if not stronger than the symbol of peace himself.
Yeah...Word spread fast when Izuku told class A his story and made it clear that he didn't mind if the information got out at that point.
"My father said he'd be coming too, though I warn you that he'll probably try to cozy up to the politicians and...Magicians of your world." Endeavor had gotten a bit better after All Might's death mellowed him out but he was still the type that would try to increase his own influence and personal power when he could.
"I guessed as much, it's really not much of an issue, if anything King Belzerg will probably find his attempts funny. Ah, by the way, I was asked to help you guys out with the cultural festival and already have a few ideas. How do you all feel about trying out some of the food and magical trinkets from our world?" The class collectively jumped at the opportunity. Though some were a little bummed out that they would have to choose between that and the concert they had already decided on.
"Who says you can't do both? The concert can be the main event while the food and trinkets can act be a gift shop of sorts to remember the occasion. Aqua-chan, Yaoyorozu-san, and I can even make clothing appropriate for the event." The idea had even more support and an enthusiastic agreement from Momo who was happy for the help. "Great! We can head back to our world real quick and round up some supplies, how do you guys feel about flying cabbage and fried giant toad? It's about that time of year again…"
…"Flying what now?!" Right. He still hadn't gotten to that story yet.
I'll leave it here for now. The festival is well on its way, class A is preparing to go into the great and chaotic unknown that is Belzerg, and Eri is slowly but surely making craters from her excited vibrations. All is right with the world, for now at least.
Fair warning, I'm getting a new job soon and it will likely be an overnight shift position, 12 hours a day...So that will obviously change my upload schedule, hopefully not by much since it also means I'll have 3-4 days of rest a week. We shall see.
Either way, I hope you all enjoyed the chapter, and as always, have a great day.
