27.01.2023
It's I, the Absolute Madman and I'm here with your weekly dose of Stranded! But first the comments!:
Guipa - It ez whad it ez. That was a nice meme. Exquisite.
n1ght4ury20 - Welp, you're gonna have to wait some more, but I hope it'll be eventually worth it!
Zadenados - Kinda sad, especially since I got absolutely no idea why, but as was said earlier - It ez whad it ez.
And now, the chapter!:
Almost as soon as Izuku began his tale he found himself nearly smothered by Tokage who, as soon as she learned about the six months that he'd had to spend all by himself in what could be easily described as a hostile environment. Now he kinda understood why Kendo had trouble breathing in the all-things-lizard fanatic's embrace. Shiozaki muttered a short prayer thanking the Lord for watching over him - he didn't feel anyone watching over him when he ate soap, mind you - and even Kodai's completely unphased expression had softened somewhat for a short moment.
Speaking of soap - yes, the dreaded story had been told once again, only this time he was far too done with it to argue and decided to laugh it off whilst swearing revenge. At least Shiozaki was polite enough not to chuckle at his misfortune.
When the conversation returned to the more serious and mundane topics, the two groups could finally compare their respective experiences, which, as it turned out pretty quickly - were quite different from each other, despite them living relatively closely to one another.
For starters - the vegetation.
Izuku began by telling how he experimented with the differently colored berries and the effects that they possessed. Kendo and the girls confirmed his words as they too had discovered the medicinal berry which was a true godsend - one that Shiozaki prayed fervently for - but their studies were far more tame than what Izuku and the girls themselves had done. Understandable as Momo was the one who single-handedly pushed for continuous experimentation.
But, whilst the topic of berries was something they agreed on, there was something that they had argued about. Izuku mentioned how the bushes would bear fruit every two-three days which made gathering food quite easy, but that turned out to not be the case for the 1-B girls.
Apparently it took at least a week, usually even longer than that!, for unripe berries to appear on bushes and another couple of days for them to mature enough to become safe to eat. Thankfully they had plenty of bushes around and usually by the time they were done picking everything there was to pick around their little hidden valley, the patches that they started with would be already at least partially ripe and ready for harvest.
And berries weren't the only thing affected by the lowered growth speed. It actually affected everything including the grass, trees, vines and flowers, so gathering firewood was something that they had to constantly keep in mind as it took a relatively long time for the trees to grow back. Thankfully they had managed to find a surprisingly sturdy fire axe in one of their first supplies drops so they didn't have to resort to using crude tools made out of rock or something, because whilst Kendo was pretty sure she'd be able to cut down a tree with her bare hands it would undoubtedly mess up the aforementioned extremities beyond all repair, at least without some form of protection.
And that's how they managed to smoothly jump from one subject to another - supply drops.
Ever since they met Kendo, both Izuku's and Momo's minds were working overtime to piece together a puzzle that they just received additional pieces for. They already had a rough idea as to why there would suddenly be two supply drops every week, one of which always seemed to land far beyond their reach, but once they asked Kendo how long they'd been here already it all clicked into place.
The second batch of supplies was meant for Kendo and later her group. Or rather, for Kendo and her group. Yes, that's another giant difference that made absolutely no sense all things considered.
Izuku, as was already revealed at the very start of the conversation, had spent half a year in total isolation without anyone to back him up or talk to. Kendo on the other hand had told them something entirely different. Apparently the four of them had all appeared in this world on the same day.
This was not how Itsuka wanted to start the week. Apparently she'd stayed up a bit longer than she expected, browsing the internet in search of the a new leather jacket as her current one already had wear and tear, and whilst there was absolutely nothing wrong with that as it honestly added it even more appeal to it in her opinion, she needed something in nigh pristine condition for what she was mentally conditioning herself to do for a while now already.
She went to sleep around midnight and not only forgot to plug her phone in for the night, but also forgot to turn off the screen so the battery ended up dying while she slept. This meant that there was no alarm to shake her awake at a reasonable hour and she ended up running incredibly late.
As soon as she realized what was going on, she became a chaotic mess, running around her room like a headless chicken as she hastily tried to dress herself. Thankfully she had her uniform prepared so that saved her a good few minutes.
Itsuka grabbed her bag as she sprinted towards the door and nearly blew it off its hinges as she ran out into the corridor. She noticed that something was off as soon as her foot failed to make contact with the floor and she found herself flipping in an endless void. She wanted to scream, she really did, but even though she could feel her vocal cords strain there was no sound. There's no way to tell how long she spent falling into nothingness as one moment she was still there and another she was already laying flat on the grass.
Looking around she immediately realized that she was no longer on the campus as none of the trees around her looked even close to being native to Japan. The vines and the jungle-like vibe was also a good indicator of that. Itsuka was wondering if this was perhaps some kind of an exercise prepared by that scheming homeroom teacher in charge of class A, but her thoughts were caught short when she heard something fall behind her.
She flipped around, fists enlarging and ready for a fight, only to realize that her fists remained at their regular size and that there also won't be any fighting. At least not the physical kind anyways.
"Sets?" Itsuka let out in confusion as the lizard-loving seaweed-green-haired girl massaged her butt which probably took the brunt of the impact.
"Prez!" Setsuna immediately lit up. "You won't believe what just happened!" Her exclamation was met with a straight 'try me' expression from Itsuka.
Before either of them had a chance to even think what was going on they heard two more thuds behind Itsuka. The amber-haired girl turned around as Setsuna peeked around her friend. There, laying on the ground and massaging their bruised parts, were Ibara and Yui.
"Woah, now this is just weird." Setsuna mused as she approached Itsuka. "Any idea where we are? Or what happened in general?" She questioned.
"I'm not sure what happened or how we got here, or where 'here' is even, but it looks like we are… Stranded."
"We found this valley when we were looking for a safe place to sleep once the evening of our first day came around and we heard some really disturbing howls in the distance." Kendo explained as she vaguely gestured around their not-so-little hole in the wall. "I'm not gonna lie, we were pretty much scared shitless-"
"Language."
"- for the first two weeks I think? Thankfully Sets managed to figure out a thing or two about a thing or two and it's been mostly smooth sailing going forward."
"Jeez Prez, you're gonna make me blush if you keep buttering me up like that. Please continue." Tokage teased with a grin that Izuku could swear looked almost like a carbon copy of Mina's. He'd know, he was on the receiving end of that grin more times than he could count.
This seemed to be just how Tokage acted on a daily basis judging by how Kendo simply rolled her eyes with a ghost of a smile passing over her lips.
"I wonder why we were appearing one by one whilst you all got transported here at the same time?" Momo voiced the thought that crossed everyone's mind at one point during the conversation.
"Or how come our stories are so different in general if we were basically almost neighbors for a couple of months already?" Tokage continued, deeply in thought.
Three seconds passed before both Momo's and Tokage's heads snapped in nigh perfect sync as they locked eyes and grins formed on their faces.
"Great, now there's two of them!" Mina and Tooru lamented, already imagining all the fancy, smarty-pants words that those two could throw at them if they were to work together.
"Great, now there's two of them!" Izuku and Kendo celebrated, already imagining all the great things those two could achieve if they were to work together.
"God, it's been so long that I've forgotten how handsome he is! Just looking at him is making me feel all kinds of tingly." Kodai thought to herself, shuffling in place as innocently as she could.
"Don't call the Lord's name in vain." Shiozaki mentally scolded, sensing that someone had indeed used the Lord's name in vain.
Before Momo and Tokage could start ping-ponging ideas off of one another, an eerily high-pitched howl reverberated inside the hideout. It served not only to shut up any and all attempts at communications that may or may have not been about to happen but to also help them realize just how long they were discussing things for.
It was already getting dark and the giant trees all around bathed the hidden valley in shades and shadows, signaling that it was a good time to start getting ready for bed.
Let's see if the math checks out. One campfire. Four tents. Ten people. Eight girls. One guy. One unconscious omnipotent daughter. Yup, it didn't check out at all. None of those numbers add up to anything even remotely sensible.
"Right, we can't really have you sleep on the ground now, can we?" Kendo mumbled out. She seemed to mull over the subject for a few moments before eventually sighing in what looked to be defeat. "I guess we could cram two people per tent, but we'd still be short two spots."
"I can take him." Kodai thought, her thighs rubbing together in a painfully slow manner, hopefully slow enough to make it unnoticeable.
"It's alright." Izuku said after Kendo tried, but ultimately failed, to come up with a solution. "I'd honestly prefer to stay by Shu's side, so I'll just light a second fire off to the side and sleep there. I'll be fine, I swear." He added at the end once he saw that Kendo was about to argue.
"Who is Shu?" Tokage questioned curiously.
"Oh, she's my adoptive daughter, but it's a long story and we don't really have time for it now, but I promise I'll tell it tomorrow!" Izuku answered and got up, dusting himself off before dragging the sled away from the main campsite, intending to give the girls some privacy.
His girls probably wouldn't mind him sticking around, hell, Mina and Tooru would probably be ecstatic to drag him into their tent no matter how cramped it would've been, but he didn't want to make the other girls uncomfortable, especially Shiozaki who as far as he was aware was still very religious.
Izuku watched as, unsurprisingly to him, Mina and Tooru decided to take the right-most tent as Momo and Kyouka took the one next to them. What did surprise him a bit was the fact that Kendo had decided to share the tent with Shiozaki and not Tokage like he expected. Well, he knew each of them fairly well due to the numerous joint training exercises that Aizawa and Kan had put them through over the years, but he wouldn't say that he knew them that well.
"I guess now we get a chance to get to know each other better…" Izuku thought to himself idly as he covered Shusa with a thick layer of blankets whilst he himself opted to use only a single one as impromptu bedding and another one to somewhat isolate himself from the elements. "Now that we've got a place to stay we can get around to helping you get back on your two feet and once that's done you're so grounded." He joked in amusement, hope filling him as he fell asleep.
The morning was… eventful, let's put it that way.
Izuku woke up fairly early, at least he guessed it was fairly early judging by the fact that everyone else seemed to be still fast asleep. He stretched himself in his spot as he worked the grogginess out of his system before eventually getting up.
Just as he was done getting up however, he heard one of the tents unzip. His head idly turned in the direction of the sound and his eyes shot wide open when he saw Kendo emerge from the tent that she shared with Shiozaki.
Instead of the clothes that he saw her wear yesterday however, she was now dressed in nothing but a pair of teal shorts and black sports bra. That wasn't the most shocking sight however, no. The thing that caught Izuku's attention the most was her amber-colored hair which she had yet to tie into her usual ponytail and was currently flowing freely behind her. It looked good on her. Really good in fact. She stretched her back as she yawned, her chest bulging out as she did so, finally drawing his attention away from her hair and to the rest of her body. Ooh boy, and what a body it was!
Kendo's body was as slim as Tooru's and her bust was a size or two smaller, but even from a distance he could see the traces of muscle that suited her overall tomboy-ish look perfectly.
He had no idea how long he was staring but was shaken out of his torpor when his green eyes made contact with her teal ones. They stayed like that for a moment or two before Kendo waved awkwardly in his direction, her other hand trying to cover… anything really, before she dived back inside her tent with a faint red dusting on her cheeks. Although to be fair he could've made that last bit up as he was still sitting quite a distance away from the camp.
"This… is certainly going to take some getting used to…" He thought to himself as he felt his body heat up by a degree or five, the visual stimuli doing nothing to remedy the male affliction known as morning wood.
Once all the girls woke up they sat down to get some breakfast in their bellies, they had an entire day of work ahead of them after all.
The breakfast itself consisted mostly of berries, who could've guessed right?, but there were also some fruits like apples and pears as well as some roots to choose from. Needless to say it was a very welcome change from what Izuku and the girls were used to eating day in and day out. It was honestly quite surprising that they didn't suffer from some serious microelement deficiencies after all this time.
"Alright, with double the people we should be able to do everything way faster than normally, so let's get to it and then we can try to figure out our unexpected housing shortage." Kendo commanded like the leader that she probably was.
To be honest Izuku didn't think that their group had any kind of leadership or chain of command. They were mostly just going with the flow and from time to time humoring Momo's sudden ideas.
"I'm fine sleeping like this for a while longer." Izuku chimed in.
"That sounds exactly like something you'd say just not to bother others." Kendo leveled him a halfhearted glare and he couldn't help but chuckle sheepishly, she kinda hit the nail right on the head, even if this time he really was saying the truth.
"We still have our tools, so I'm sure we could eventually build something, right Momo?" Kyouka asked.
"That's right! We could build a small hut for everyone!" Momo exclaimed in glee.
"Woah sister, hold your horses! Don't you think that it's a bit on the ambitious side? I mean, nine houses? Sounds pretty tough." Tokage doubted, but as soon as the words left her mouth the class A girls shared smug looks with each other before pointing towards their fifth member.
"Wait till you see what he can do with that axe." Mina stated cockily and the other girls seconded her opinion.
"Alright ladies, food first and then we can start thinking about expanding our accommodations, sounds fair?" Kendo reined the group in.
A chorus of various agreements sounded from the group and so they wrapped up their breakfast before heading out to start gathering. They had a quota to fill afterall!
Ayo, Izuku the Builder comin' up. But first, how about we hold an 'abs cheese grating' contest between him and Kendo? I'd watch it.
I'd also watch out for the next chapter of Crusader/Flagellant!
Shameless plug aside - got nothing to say so I'm gonna bounce. Bounce on your boi's dick. Ha, gott'em. For real this time. Have a great day and I'll catch y'all in the next update!