Chapter 5 : May you live in interesting times

" Ba dumb, ba dumb!, ba dumb!!, ba dumb!!!, ba dumb!!!!! "

' What? What's going on? Why... ? '

The minute Midoriya looked his mysterious doppelganger in the eye, he was immediately seized by a terror unlike any he had ever felt before, he broke out in a cold sweat, immediately hunched over on his desk and started hyperventilating.

At that moment it felt as if some disgusting entity had plunged it's slimy and cold hand straight through his ribcage and was currently gripping his heart, as if any moment could be his last. The current feeling bore a resemblance to the first time he met All Might, when the symbol of peace saved him from the slime villian that tried to drown him, but it felt a thousand times worse, he imagined that this must be what a sheep feels when they look into the eyes of the butcher brandishing the instrument of its demise.

" ... , Eku, Deku!!!!! "

Almost as if in some distant dream, he started hearing a familiar voice, but it was so muffled that he couldn't really make out what the person was trying to say, although it did get louder and louder untill he could hear that the person was shouting out his name.

" Hey, are you okay? " Ochako said to him with a hint of tears in her eyes.

" Yeah, I'm, I'm fine " Midoriya said as his breathing finally started getting back to normal.

He looked around and he could see that all eyes were on him, even their new student was looking at him like he had grown a second head.

" Midoriya, are you okay? " Mr Aizawa asked as he started walking to wards him.

" Yes sir, I'm fine, sorry about that " he said as he tried to wave away both the concern and eyes of his classmates which had both fallen squarely on him.

" Fine, but you should go to recovery girl when the period ends "

Mr Aizawa looked at him one last time and then seeing that he seemed to have gotten over whatever hangup he was going through Mr Aizawa decided that it would be best to go back to having their new student finish his introductions so that they can move on to more pressing matters.

After Midoriya's little episode the mood got a little more tense and Izuku sensing that the atmosphere had changed decided that his introduction would have to end there, he decided to just go sit down.

" The teachers had a meeting yesterday and there has been a change of plans, your timetable for the day will be different than usual " Mr Aizawa said as he instructed the students to go to the locker room and suit up.

" I think we should cancel the trip, knowing what we know it would be irresponsible to place the lives of our students at risk like that "

" I agree, even if nothing happens we shouldn't risk it "

" I'm not sure that's the best course of action" the principal said as all eyes fell on him.

The staff of UA were having an urgent meeting to discuss their new enigmatic student, with Principal Nedzu and the others who had already interacted with the parallel Earth Izuku Midoriya filling in the rest of the staff as to the events surrounding their new student.

It had taken a lot of explaining but the rest of the staff had finally come to understand the situation they found themselves in and so now the conversation had inevitably landed on the topic of Class 1 - A's trip to the USJ.

The majority of the teachers were of the opinion that the school shouldn't take a chance and should immediately cancel or reschedule the trip but now it seemed that the principal was of a different opinion.

" Think about it, if things in our universe unfold the same as in Young Midoriya's Universe then we have a huge advantage over these villians in terms of intel, and now a situation that could have potentially found us lacking could be used to deal with a group that sounds like they could be troublesome. "

" But sir, even if we could maybe deploy all the teachers as extra security, there's no guarantee that there won't be any accident's " Cementos said with quite a few of the other teachers nodding their heads in agreement.

" That's certainly true but think of it this way, if our students don't go on that trip and that date passes, that means we will have reached the limits of Young Midoriya's knowledge on this situation, his time will have caught up with ours and he won't be making any more predictions

this means that we would potentially still have a group of villians that are hostile to the school but now we wouldn't know when they will attack us which would put our students in even more danger.

At least this way we can put contingencies in place that can minimise the risk to our students, and as for the possibility of any accident's...

Well our students knew the risks involved when they decided to become heroes "

" The principal is right " Mr Aizawa said with a downward gaze.

He loathed to admit it but the Principal's logic was flawless, if they didn't use this information the window would close and they would have squandered what basically amounted to a prophecy from on high.

He was terrified for the safety of his students but he also understood that this was the safest option.

After it was established that everyone was on the same page, the focus now had to be on deciding what the best course of action was and how to best prepare their students for what they might encounter.

" Nice to meet you man, the name's Eijiro Kirishima"

" I'm Denki Kaminari, nice to meet you, but wow dude I can't get over how much you look like Midoriya and same name too, that's insane, are you guys twins? "

" Shut up you idiot, Deku doesn't have a twin! "

All of the class 1A guys except for Izuku Midoriya were in the boys locker room changing for this mysterious exercise that Mr Aizawa didn't want to explain.

They were taking this time to introduce themselves to their new classmate.

"Nice to meet you guys too, and no I do not have a twin, not as far as I know anyway " Izuku said with a smile.

" But you really do look exactly the same as him, it's disturbing " Iida said as he was inspecting Izuku like he was the most interesting thing he had ever seen.

" Are you guys crazy, this ass hole is much more good looking than Midoriya " Mineta said as he gave Izuku the stink eye.

Izuku couldn't believe it, these people acted exactly the same as his own classmates, he had yet to notice even a single difference in their behaviour, although he noticed that Bakugo was looking at him with a stare of unmatched intensity, or at least it was way more intense than his own Bakugo's stares but otherwise it was almost like he was in his own universe.

Except he wasn't home and these people weren't his friends, as evidenced by the fact that they were introducing themselves to him, like the stranger he was.

" Wow, it just got really chilly " Mineta said as everyone started shivering a little bit.

" I would have to run more tests on you, but at the current moment you seem fine, I believe you might have just had a panic attack " She said as she looked at her most frequent visitor with worry in her eyes.

As everyone went to the locker rooms, Midoriya had gone to Recovery Girls' s office as Mr Aizawa had instructed, she had just finished running some tests on him and she had found that he was ok.

He thought about her diagnosis and it sort of made sense or at least it was how he guessed a panic attack would feel like especially since he had always had a lot of anxiety, so he had been in similar situations, although he had never felt anything of such intensity and without any discernable cause.

She had asked him some questions about how he felt and what he thought might have been the reason for his sudden attack but he found them incredibly hard to answer.

The only concrete image he had in his mind about the incident was that he felt like he was going to die, similar to how you might feel when someone points a gun at your head.

" Well, I think you can go back to class now but please do come back later so we can run more tests. "

" Thank you, I'll come back after school " he said as he left her office.

' I wonder why he looks like me so much, and with the same name? Maybe I have a long lost twin. ' he thought to himself as he was walking to the locker room.

His panic attack had distracted him from contemplating it but now that he was a bit more at ease his mind couldn't help but wonder back to his new classmate.

He was very well versed in the concept of doppelgangers but he had never heard of doppelganger's that seem so similar, if he discounted the colour of Izuku's hair and eyes then he was basically an exact copy of him.

' it's so bizarre '

Bang!!!!!!!!

All of a sudden the door slammed shut behind them, everyone looked back because it was just so sudden but as they were still distracted by the door being shut, all the lights were turned off.

This was the site of their surprise exercise, they were in what looked like a warehouse, or rather one of those huge wholesale shops, like a really big wallmart.

" Hey, what's going on!!!???? Let me out of here !!! " Mineta shouted as he banged on the door.

The others were also shaken a little bit but they were slightly calmer as they understood that the school would obviously never hurt them.

Everybody just started trying to look around, but it was pitch black, you couldn't really see more than a couple of centimeters from yourself.

" Cementos, you can begin " while they were still in that panic mode the students heard Mr Aizawa's voice echo throughout the store.

Without a moment's delay, walls were immediately erected in the store, these walls all stretched from a point on the door all the way to the horizon.

There were four walls in total and each wall now held a certain number of our students hostage, they were cut off from the rest of their classmates, although because of the ernomity of this place each group still had a very hefty bit of breathing room.

" Attention all students, the exercise shall now begin. You will all be separated into two groups, heroes and villians, you will be able to classify which group the people you encounter fall into based on the colour of the light emitting from the tags you were provided at the start of the exercise.

The blue group shall be the villains and the red group shall be the heroes, each group is divided into smaller teams, which are made up of members of the same group on the same side of the wall, each hero team shall be tasked with either soliciting a verbal surrender from the villains or evading them until the exercise ends, although be warned that you can only start evading after an encounter with a villain team and the heroes decide that they are unable to subdue the team, you are not allowed to hide yourself before trying to subdue the villains, after a clash with a villain team, a hero team will be allowed to use the strategy of hiding.

Each villian team shall be tasked with killing any hero team they encounter, the heroes shall be declared dead when it is deemed that any continuation of the fight would only result in them getting needlessly hurt and that they are unable to escape.

That is all, you may begin. " The Principal's lengthy explanation boomed over the store's speaker system

After the end of that speech, Izuku finally decided to look around and surprise surprise, he couldn't really see much beyond a couple of centimeters from him, even the light emitting from the tags was pretty useless, all he could see was the blue near his chest, and one other blue light near him, but their lighting was so bad that he couldn't even tell who the other person was.

As he was about to talk to his mysterious companion it suddenly got extremely bright in the room, and he immediately shut his eyes, as they were almost blinded in that instance.

"Oh, sorry about that " he heard a soft voice say to him, he looked up and he found himself standing with the class deputy Momo Yaoyorozu

" Oh no it's fine, I'm just glad to have some light " he said with a huge smile that just effortlessly blossomed on his face, he couldn't believe his it, getting paired with the girl that could create things was a brilliant stroke of luck.

" Are we the only members of the villain group on this side of the wall ? " She asked as she also started to look around.

" Yeah, it seems so. " Midoriya said as they both just scanned their immediate surroundings, he was struck by how even with Yaoyorozu having created such a powerful flash light there was still such a huge part of the store they couldn't see.

You could only see for maybe 20 meters until the darkness started to encroach on the light, and after about 50 meters you couldn't really see anything.

He shivered to imagine what his less fortunate classmates were going through in all this darkness, their situations were even worse than his.

It was quiet, eerily quiet like that really tense scene in a horror movie where you know that one of our characters is about to die, the only sound was both their fidgeting and small movements as they looked around.

There were quite a few aisles in front of them, with most of them seeming to just be filled with food.

They were both taking this lull in conversation as an opportunity to reflect on the scope of their current task and the way to go about achieving their objectives.

" I think we should come up with a plan. I don't know if you noticed but all of our classmates' tags were blue, so who are these so called heroes? " She asked.

" Yeah you are right, they were all blue, meaning we should all be part of the same group, but if we are part of the same group, then who did they get to be the heroes, maybe the teachers or a different class, but wait what about ... " he completely went of the rails and started mumbling as he thought about their current situation.

' Weird, that's the same thing that Midoriya does' Momo thought as she looked at their new classmate who was busy mumbling like a mad scientist.

She wasn't very close with Izuku Midoriya, but they were classmates and he was a very nice guy so she had some fondness for him.

She hadn't really thought about it, but looking at him now as he was displaying the exact same behaviour as Midoriya, she couldn't help but be shocked by how similar they looked.

The hair and eyes were one thing but everything else was identical, it had to be impossible to look this much like anyone by chance, and they even had similar personalities.

' Who are you ?' she wondered as she almost blurted it out, but she was able to reign herself in as she deemed it would be impolite.

As that thought was crossing her mind, Izuku finally came back to Earth.

" Sorry " he said as his cheeks reddened.

" No, it's fine, as long as all that thinking was worth it. "

" yep, it was, I've thought about it and it doesn't really matter who our enemies are, with your versatility and my raw power we shouldn't have any problems. So, let's go " He said as he immediately started walking towards the aisles.

" Wait, what? That's not a strategy, hell that's not even a plan, what if our enemies are stronger than you? "

After she said that, Izuku stopped walking and looked back at her.

All of a sudden she started feeling cold, but she still focused on Izuku, she wanted to know his answer.

Izuku just looked at her and then he took a deep breath and let it out, the breath was visible in the air, like on those cold mornings.

"All I can say is that if we do run into someone stronger than me, then no plan will save us. " He said as he immediately started walking again.

" That sounds pretty arrogant " she said as she also started walking with him.

" It's not arrogance, it's self awareness, I would never use such a crude strategy in real hero work, but I just happen to know that the odds of finding anyone at this school capable of taking me on in pure combat are low. "

" Ok, then, I hope you're right "

After that discussion they both fell silent, and she just took this moment to look around.

Even for someone as rich as her, it was amazing to think that this giant store full of actual food and basically anything else you could ever need to buy was just a training spot for the school's students, almost like it was a flex showcasing the soft power that the school wields.

The aisle they were currently walking down, seemed to have a lot of different types of snacks, and they were currently passing through a huge assortment of different potato chips, with some being name brands that she had never seen before.

As they were walking, Izuku took a pack of Doritos and opened it, and started eating.

" You want some ?" He asked as he passed the pack to her.

" Yeah, thanks. " She said as she took the packet and started eating.

Her first thought was to say no, but since her powers were literally fuelled by food and she was slightly nervous, she decided eating might be the proper response.

' He seems more confident than our Izuku ' she thought as she observed her partner.

She didn't even know what his quirk was or if it was actually powerful, but she felt that she could trust him, besides it sounded like this particular exercise didn't have any bearing on their grades, so she was ok with taking a leap.

"She's right, that does sound arrogant " Mr Aizawa said, as he was intently watching the monitor showing their new student.

The teacher's were all in a room that had a live feed of everything taking place in the store, the camera's had night vision while the tags that were assigned to the students were fitted with tiny mic's.

" If you had that kind of power wouldn't you also be a tad arrogant? I mean he did say he was able to one shot a villain that was pummeling you, and you saw first hand the carnage that he unleashed on the bridge.

Besides he's not wrong, the only people in this school who could take him are probably you, All Might and maybe his counterpart if he could control his quirk, so like he said, it's not arrogance, it's just a deep understanding of the limits of his quirk." Midnight said as she was also looking at the screen without blinking.

" What's going on? we are sinking!!! " Mineta shouted as he struggled to try and get free.

" Don't fret, my dazzling light shall free us " Aoyama said, as he held on to both of them and then shot his naval laser down towards the ground.

The laser pushed them out of the ground, and they crashed a few metres away from the spot they were in.

" Thanks, Aoyama, but what was that ? " Midoriya said as he started looking around.

He could now see what looked to be four tiny points of red light that were floating in front of them.

" Aoyama, could you give us some light " He said as they all started panicking a little bit.

Aoyama shot his naval laser, and the brief moment of light that they received showed them that they were indeed dealing with four individuals that they had never seen before.

Midoriya had been racking his brain trying to deduce who they would be facing, as like Yaoyorozu and Izuku he had been able to discern that they would be facing people other than their classmates but he had never seen these individuals before.

Aoyama' s quirk had only been able to give them light for about a second but he was able to see their opponents, it was two guys and two girls.

The guy in front who seemed to be the one who's quirk they had been facing was wearing a costume that seemed similar to the one Iida wears except that his was orange and black, with some other minor differences.

While he was still trying to figure out the identities of their mysterious opponents various nuts, bolts and other miscellaneous tools started flying towards them at frightening speeds.

They were able to dodge a few of them, but with the lighting conditions they were at a disadvantage and some of them were able to hit him and his teammates.

" Ouch!!! are you guys trying to kill us ? " Mineta yelled as he also started tossing some of his sticky balls at their opponents, while receiving cover fire from Aoyama who also started firing his naval laser.

The onslaught from his teammates, made the other team stop attacking, as it seemed like they had only one individual who could attack at long range.

Just as Midoriya was contemplating on whether they should continue attacking or retreat, the shelf to the left of them, about 5 metres in front seemed to lose its balance and started falling.

Boooom!!!!!

It crashed into the other shelves that were parallel to it and set of a chain reaction, every single second now seemed to be punctuated with the sound of crashes.

" Guys, let's fall back and regroup "

Midoriya said as they could now no longer see their opponents who were hidden by the shelf and it's contents.

Immediately after he said that, he saw a punch coming towards him from out of the ground, he tried to dodge but it was too late and he was hit.

As he was still trying to orient himself after that punch, Mineta grabbed his hand and pulled him in the opposite direction as they started running.

" Aoyama, give us some light " Midoriya said as they were still running.

Aoyama shot a laser beam in front of them, and the light it produced was enough to show them their other three enemies were now in front of them.

" They must have circled around the back while the other guy distracted us. " Midoriya shouted as they came to a screeching halt.

Vines started growing from the ground in front of them, slowly encroaching on the area they were standing.

" Aoyama!! " Midoriya shouted as Aoyama moved to the front and immediately Fired a laser blast at the vines.

The blast lasted about 2 seconds and was directed in a way as to start from the left and move right, and it was able to bisect the vines in half.

" Oh, my stomach " Aoyama said as he held onto his stomach and crouched down in pain

A second after Aoyama fired of his blast, a figure jumped towards them from behind the vines, while they were still shocked the figure moved towards Aoyama.

" Smash !!! " Midoriya shouted as he unleashed a smash from his left index finger aimed at their attacker.

The person was off balance because of the running, so the smash slammed into the attacker and was able to toss them back towards their teammates.

" Kendo! " They heard one of their attackers shout and immediately after, Midoriya was hit by a projectile on his right shoulder.

The projectile knocked him off his feet and he fell, as he was getting back up, the ground around him suddenly became soft and he started sinking again.

As he started sinking, he felt someone hold onto his leg and pull him down, this caused him to sink faster.

" Smash " he shouted as he let loose another smash from his left middle finger which was able to allow him to free himself as he was propelled about a metre from the ground.

Midoriya crashed near his teammates and before he could even catch his breath one of their enemies swiftly moved towards them.

" Mineta, now " he said as he stood ready to face them.

Vines started growing from the ground again but this time they immediately went towards Aoyama, as the vines were wrapping around Aoyama he also saw Mineta begin to sink.

" What did you do ? " He heard a lady shout.

" What's going on ? " He also heard a more masculine voice complaining.

" Aoyama, could we please have some light "

Just as Midoriya had thought the quick sand guy was now glued to a small object made of Mineta' s balls that had a light emitting tag on it, and it was also the same with the vines, they also seemed to be in luck because the vines were actually a part of the individuals body, so they couldn't just keep attacking them.

It seemed that the individual that he had hit with the smash was still incapacitated, so that meant that they had managed to defeat 3 of their enemies and only one was left.

" Guys, give me some cover " Midoriya said as he ran towards their final opponent.

While he was running Mineta and Aoyana were providing cover fire for him towards their enemy, the other individual found their movement curtailed and before they could even do anything Midoriya fired of one final smash right at him.

A similar scene was now playing out in most of the other locations, with most teams having run into their counterparts, the battles were fierce and a lot of the students, both heroes and villains found that their enemies were at a similar strength to them. At this current moment most of the battles had already taken place and the win's and losses were about evenly split between heroes and villains.

"I guess I should start preparing, you should create some warm clothes." Izuku said as he and Yaoyorozu were walking in a random direction.

"What do you mean... " Yaoyorozu was asking but before she could even finish speaking a drop of snow landed on her nose, and just like that, the first few drops of snow started falling.

After seeing this scene Yaoyorozu immediately created some warm clothes and put them on.

She didn't say anything else and just started to ponder, she was really curious to see this quirk, of course she could ask and he would certainly tell her what his quirk was, they were teammates after all but she wanted to see it with her own eyes and she had a feeling the time was near.

As they were walking Yaoyorozu felt a rush of wind pass by her and when she looked to her side Izuku was gone, before she could even get her bearings she heard and felt vibrations coming from the shelves to her right and by sheer luck and instinct she leaped forward.