Bakugou Katsuki flexed his hands, feeling the sweat build up, but he didn't ignite it. He ground his teeth and slowly turned to Deku.

"Deku," He growled. The nerd paused in his dumb rant. "Deku if you say one more damn word about the stupid architecture I'm gonna punt your face back to Japan."

Deku smiled in that wobbly way of his that made Katsuki's hands smoke faintly. "Kacchan, I don't think it's going to be that simple this time around..."

He growled and shoved his hands in his pockets, mostly so he wouldn't get fined for blatant quirk use or assault. With how things seemed to be going, neither seemed to be a likely option.

He felt one of his pockets shift, just enough that anyone who wasn't Bakugou Katsuki would not have noticed it. His scowl deepened and thrust his elbow out. It met resistance and suddenly there was a would be pickpocket groaning on the floor, clutching their stomach.

Deku stared, wide eyed. "Ka-kacchan! You can't just hit someone like that!"

"Open your eyes, idiot nerd!" He grabbed the thief by their wrist, hefting them from the ground. "This," They hissed at him and he hissed back, twisting until they wheezed and dropped the cards in their hand, "is a thief, a shitty one at that."

The thief in question tried to wrench their hand away from his grip, but Katsuki, who has a strong wrist and a strong grip and hands that literally can survive a grenade going off in them, wasn't fazed in the slightest. So the pickpocket opted to throw out spitfire curses at him in English. Deku, the damn nerd, only managed to pick up half of them and seemed horrified.

Bakugou Katsuki heard worse from the Hag and English wasn't even her native language. "Shut your damn mouth, extra! Keep your damn fingers out of people's pockets and maybe you won't get a shitty shank in your own ribs, you sucky loser!"

Then he let them twist out of his grip and disappear into the crowd of people around them who didn't spare a single glance to the exchange. Like it was normal.

"We should probably call a hero over..."

Katsuki wondered how Deku could be such a nerd but so dumb at the same time.

"Stupid nerd," He grumbled. They haven't seen a single hero since they got here, not on patrol or even on billboards. The only thing on billboards was either some dumb technology advertisement or a bunch of graffiti.

Deku was really useless if he hasn't figured it out by now.

The loser's eyebrows were furrowed, a sign he was actually using his head for once. Then his eyes widened and his head snapped over to Katsuki. "You don't think..."

Katsuki rolled his eyes. The stupid gothic architecture that Deku rambled about for ten minutes straight was a clue. They were old buildings, with cracking foundations and weeds sprouting from between the cracks of sidewalk, lined with beaten up light posts that seem to mostly be broken. The Bricks in the walls probably used to be a reddish brown before they faded to that murky brown color that almost looked like dried blood. Not that the color of the bricks mattered, since the majority of the walls were covered in graffiti, and a lot had several layers where people covered graffiti with their own. Most of them were symbols, so figured the illegal art was a way the local gangs marked territory- like a bunch of feral dogs, wanting to piss all over the other's piss.

All without a hero in sight.

Katsuki hasn't ever seen a neighborhood with this much obvious crime, much less an entire city. Usually daylight heroes focus on a certain area if it is bad, until it dips back to regular levels of crime. Then some loser hero would continue to patrol the area and the others would move on to the next spot they can settle down in.

All this active crime in sight and hardened civilians, no hero around. Makes it look like the city got abandoned by heroes, given up on.

Bakugou Katsuki is exactly the type of person to look at a broken city, something one step away from complete collapse, to look at it and start his career there. Because there's nothing that doesn't scream 'the best' than starting where no one else dares to be and fixing the whole damned place. So Katsuki had done -and he hates to word it like this, because it's a nerd word- research about the most crime riddled cities in the world.

This clearly would top the list.

But no 'Gotham City' ever popped up in any of his internet searches.

Katsuki was pissed off about the possibilities, pissed off that the city was full of English speakers. Just don't tell Deku that he was somewhat relieved he got stuck with him instead of someone dumb like Sparky or someone incompetent like Grapeface.

"You don't think we're in some sort of alternate dimension?!"

Nevermind.

Icy Hot must have been rubbing off on his boyfriend. Katsuki didn't need any of this conspiracy bullcrap, especially not from Deku. If the nerd ever starts ranting about stupid government conspiracies or aliens, Katsuki knows exactly who to blame.

"What the hell, Nerd?!"

"It's just..." Deku put a finger on his chin. "There aren't any heroes around, no one around has any visible mutations. There aren't any signs of quirk use at all, even though there's so much crime around. It's either alternate dimension or some sort of time travel, neither of us has heard of Gotham city but that could be chalked up to it being in America or the upheaval the dawning of quirks caused in-"

"Quit your mumbling Deku!" Katsuki snapped. He grabbed the nerd's wrist, dragging him into a nearby alleyway, smeared with graffiti just like every single other one. This one was marred by dragons of various colors, some crossed out with red and others messily scribbled out. The only one that wasn't was gold and black. It was pretty fresh.

It didn't worry Katsuki. He could take low rank thug who didn't even reach a low villain rank. If that even existed here. Stupid Nerd and his stupid theory that was probably right.

...It wasn't even a well kept secret that some quirks could cause time travel or dimension hopping. They were just extremely rare, dumb, and weak. The users can't even control them reliably from what Katsuki has heard.

"Damn Nerd," he seethed. "This is probably your fault."

Deku didn't flinch this time. "Right, because I have a quirk that let's me hop dimensions."

"You just have the worst luck, now you've dragged me into it." Katsuki scrutinized his rival, secretly debating if All For One might have a secret dimension hopping power. All Might's punches could already change the weather and the quirk got stronger as it got passed down: Deku might have punched something a little too hard and ripped open a dimensional portal. "You probably did something stupid, nerd."

"All I did was go to sleep in the dorms, and then I woke up here." Deku sighed, still looking deep in thought. "Maybe I bumped into someone with a latent activation time travel, or dimension warping, quirk? It could have been triggered sometime through the day but only activated at night- but that doesn't explain how you came with me-"

Katsuki growled. "It doesn't matter how we got here, only how we get back."

"If we can figure out how we got here, we can figure out how to get back." Deku rolled his eyes.

"We have no way to figure that out!" He shouted. "Whoever's dumb quirk sent us here wouldn't come with us!"

"...I hadn't thought of that."

Katsuki felt his eye twitch. "That's why you're an idiot, Deku."

Deku mumbled a quiet protest, which Katsuki thoroughly ignored.

"Listen up, Deku" He grumbled. "You go do your shitty research shit, and I'll go figure out a way to survive in this hellhole."

"I-I'm not sure if splitting up is a good idea..."

"I didn't ask, nerd!"

They split up, Deku in search of the nearest library, and Katsuki in search of the nearest criminal to stea- liberate money from. It's not like the ass-villain-extras deserved any; it was probably all blood money anyway.

Katsuki just needed an excuse to let out some of his pent up aggression.

. . .

It took longer than Izuku liked for him to find a library. Which was understandable since he was rather poor at English and literally everyone around him seemed so on edge that if tried to talk to them they would run away. And everyone else was so shady he suspected if he tried to talk to them he'd manage to get on the business end of a shank.

So yeah, it was mostly a bunch of aimless wandering while he noted down buildings of interest, like what looked like a very run down supermarket or a pawn shop with the light pole out front completely knocked over. And he tried to walk with a purpose because someone came up to him at one point because 'he looked lost' and then followed him until he managed to lose them. So Izuku pulled on the experience of his earlier years of life from when he was avoiding bullies and walked swiftly with a ducked head.

Eventually, to his surprise, he did stumble across a small building with a very faded sign with a book on it.

Izuku tries not to grin too much at the sight of literature: the locals around had rather grimm countenances and he thought they might be allergic to smiling. But he can't quite conceal the pep in his step as he swings open the door. A bell rings and a tired looking college student sized him up from her place behind the counter. She squinted at him before she settled back down and said something that Izuku didn't quite catch. He nodded anyway, and pretended he both heard and understood her.

He made his way to the computers in the back, most of which were not in the best shape with added bonus of being super old. Several of them had shattered screens. Izuku made a face, but sat down at a place where the computer looked like it would at least work. It was chugging along slowly, with a fan that sounded like it was working overtime and it took about ten minutes just to load after he signed in on a guest account. He couldn't switch the language to japanese- it wasn't available- so he resigned himself to scroll through articles he could hardly understand.

Izuku searched the internet generally for 'heroes.' There were plenty of results, but the amount still paled in comparison to what would pop up if he just searched 'Musutafu heroes' or even 'heroes named after vegetables.' He clicked on a few articles but, after he scrutinized them, they seemed to be about purely fictional heroes from comics. Izuku searched for 'real heroes.'

He clicks on the wiki about some 'Justice League' that seemed promising. It looked to be some sort of organized hero team, meant to protect the whole world, independent from any established government in everyway that mattered. They were essentially a majorly neutral political body whose only purpose was to protect citizens from supernatural threats or threats that a normal police force couldn't handle. Notable members looked to be Superman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Flash, Batman, Green Lantern, and Aquaman. Each one seemed to have their own city to protect, but they worked together to take down larger threats...

Izuku clicked on the link to Superman, waited for five minutes, and eventually managed to see paragraphs of information categorized into 'events,' 'known facts,' and 'theories.' Right next to that is a short description next to a photo of a man in a blue suit and a red cape with an 'S' symbol on his chest shaking hands with someone who looked important in that vague sense anyone in a black suit and well done hair looked important. Izuku skipped straight to the known facts.

His eyes widened. Flight, superspeed, laservision, super strength, durability, frost breath-! This guy had multiple quirks, er, powers! He continued to read, as quick as he could, and he almost shouted in surprise. He was an alien?! There was confirmed alien life in this world?!

Superman didn't look like an alien and he could certainly pass as human, save for the outrageously powerful quir- superpowers. And it looked like he only had one glaring weakness: some green rock named kryptonite that also came from space. Izuku titled his head. It didn't make much sense that Suprman's only weakness was on a wiki that anyone could read. That was like having All Might's gut wound and time limit getting plastered on an electronic billboard for villains to see- before he retired, anyway. It must not be a well kept secret.

Izuku shook his head in disbelief. That was dumb. All Might wasn't that subtle, but even he managed to keep it a secret from the majority of the world. The only reason the League of Villains knew about it was because All For One was the one who inflicted it in the first place.

He clicked back to the main article and clicked on Wonder Woman, a pretty looking woman with black hair and metal armour that didn't cover much. She apparently was some sort of Demigod with super strength, durability, flight, and some sort of magic lasso? That was even more far fetched than aliens...

Aquaman wasn't human, but he wasn't an alien either. He was some sort of fish person..? At-lan-te-an? He looked human enough, but apparently had super strength, could breath underwater, and even talk to sea animals...

How is it that all of these non-humans look so similar to the species. Was it some sort of convergent evolution thing? In Izuku's world, everyone was human but most people had some sort of mutation that made them look different from the baseline person. In fact, secondary mutations were so popular that it was difficult for people to label quirkless people as the base since everyone was varying so wildly. Quirk singularity was one of those theories that people knew about but didn't feel compelled to solve before it became a problem. The idea that quirks were growing more and more powerful with every generation was often swept under the rug, even as it became more prevalent. Kind of like the old theory of climate change, where gas emissions were going to make the world unliveable eventually. People were aware of it, but most people didn't feel bothered to fix it as it wouldn't affect the world too harshly in their own lifetime.

Quirk Singularity... Was it possibly that the humans from Izuku's world were on their way to evolving into something completely new? Almost like the opposite of the heroes of this world.

But he digressed.

Martian Manhunter was a martian, from the nearby planet of Mars. He was very green with red eyes, psychic abilities of unknown limits, shapeshifting, and much more. There was less information on him, but it appeared some of his abilities were more subtle.

Green Lantern was some sort of space police man. He was able to fly and project objects -hard light constructs?- into the air from his ring. Izuku wasn't sure if he was an alien or a human with an alien ring.

Flash was the fastest man alive. He apparently wasn't an alien or anything, but rather a person who got superpowers in some sort of contrived way. The green haired boy was interested to see something similar to a quirk, even if it wasn't gained at the age of four and had some sort of external trigger that caused it.

Izuku clicked on Batman, almost expecting some sort man-bat hybrid, but is relieved to see he's just a guy in a black costume with pointy ears that only vaguely resembled a bat. He looked serious and the only clear picture of him was of hims standing in some sort of press conference, but even then he was overshadowed by the other six superheroes. Where they wore flashy and bright colors, he was just a shadow in comparison. He looked almost like Eraserhead standing next to Present Mic. Not as obviously powerful, but certainly dangerous.

And... he was practically a cryptid. He didn't have any known superpower, but he did have a lot of fancy gadgets, great detective skills, and was terrifying at martial arts. He actually had a history of brutality against criminals, even if he never had any confirmed kills. Izuku wondered if he had some sort of intelligence power, or maybe even muscle memory. Batman apparently was very territorial and didn't like it when other heroes apart of the Justice League operated in his city- unless they were his sidekicks, because he apparently had those. The only other thing about Batman on the wiki was that he operated in Gotham city.

Which was the city Izuku and Kacchan was in.

And Kacchan was beating up criminals. Probably with explosions.

Shit.