Izuku has no idea what to make of the garish patchwork of awkwardly shaped boards, metal plates, and chipped roof tiles sloppily painted blue that is the Franky Family abode, much less the giant mechanical arms jutting from its sides like a demented spider.

"This the place?" Luffy asked.

Izuku wasn't entirely sure the question was necessary. The place had 'Franky Family' written in giant, sloppy letters over the door. The thug hastily nodded, and Luffy strode right up to the door.

Izuku felt lightning dance along his arms as he psyched himself up for the battle. He had been practicing control, and now, he'd have to test himself in a real fight. He had the cuffs in his pocket, just in case, but he worried he wouldn't even think to use them if he went too far, and the building before him looked far more fragile than the ones he had blasted apart at Whiskey Peaks.

Luffy crossed his arms and frowned. When nobody answered the door, Luffy blew into his arm, ballooning it to a giant's proportions. His fist crashed straight through the front wall, leaving a jagged gaping hole.

A wall of spiked metal and cannons greet them. Thugs hunkered down behind the barricade, pointing mismatched guns at them. At the very front of their fortifications, Franky stood with his arms crossed, while two women with geometric hairstyles held pistols at a bleary, zoned-out Usopp.

"What's the big idea, knocking down the front wall?" Franky shouted. "The door was open!"

Luffy looked back at the hole. A dangling timber fell and hit the sand with a soft thump. "Oops."

"Ah, no matter. That just means it'll cost you another one of those suitcases to get your friend back. Have the girls bring them over, nice and slow, set them down right in front of us, and you can get your friend back. Alright?" He looked them over, and added, "Also, before you get any funny ideas, anyone else makes a move, we blow his brains out. Bounty's dead or alive anyways."

Izuku let his suitcase fall. Nami shot him a worried glance, but Luffy told her to do it. Looking as thunderous as an oncoming storm, Nami collected the case, while Mei brought over hers and Izuku's.

When they were at the halfway point, Luffy gave Izuku a nod. Izuku swallowed. He knew that even Luffy couldn't cross the large, open room fast enough to save Usopp. Izuku, on the other hand, could move fast as lightning. But would he be fast enough? What if he failed, and they fired a shot before he could react?

Izuku shoved his reservations aside and moved. He sent a taser's worth of voltage through each woman's arm as he wrenched their guns up. Both shots went off, and they blew two small holes in the roof.

Both women crumpled with a single punch. Izuku turned to the entrenched thugs, who all had guns trained on Usopp. He moved in front of Usopp and readied himself to tank the shots, but Luffy beat him to the punch. His arm, still oversized, stretched around them both. The bullets and cannonballs sank into his skin, then shot back with devastating force. The thugs ducked behind the barricade, saving them from the projectiles, but the barricade itself flew apart as cannonballs tore through it.

As Luffy yanked Usopp back towards safety, Izuku dove into the disoriented thugs. A rapid-fire series of punches had half of them knocked out before they even thought to respond. Bullets fired wildly towards him, but his electric body parted easily around them, and their makeshift clubs and axes cleaved through his afterimages.

As Izuku kicked a thug with a glass eye, Franky punched clean through his head. Izuku felt a weird tingle, one that wasn't simply due to having someone else's hand in his intangible brain matter. His lightning slid easily across Franky's skin.

"Wow, you're freaky," Franky said. "That's just unfair."

Izuku punched him in the jaw. Franky grinned at him and said, "Nice try, but I'm tough as a tank! You're not going to take me down that easy."

Izuku threw another punch, and this one nearly laid Franky out. He rubbed at the fist-shaped dent in his jaw and said, "Alright, that's it. You're going down!"

At this point, Izuku realized that Franky's entire body, or at least, the exterior, was made of metal. With his fingers still smarting from his last punch, Izuku instead threw lightning at Franky. He clenched his teeth and froze as the electricity coursed through his body. Once the shock ended, Franky shook himself and said, "Oof, that tingled a bit. So you're made of electricity, huh? Why don't you try this for size?"

Franky charged at him with splinters of wood grasped in his fingers. Izuku leaned around each strike, using Kami-e while he let his electricity wash over Franky. His entire front, from his face to his toes, was solid steel, but his backside was unprotected. Flashing around with Soru, Izuku wound up a punch and slammed it into Franky's back. Franky howled, and he got driven into a crater in the stone floor.

As the dust settled, Izuku swept his gaze over the Franky Family. The few thugs still conscious had abandoned their weapons, instead shaking their fallen members and searching for signs of life. Izuku gritted his teeth, wondering for a moment if he had overdone it again.

"Chopper?" Izuku asked, voice hollow. "Are any of them… did I?"

Chopper ran over to the thugs. They tensed, but with a wary glance at Izuku, they didn't stop him from examining them. "They'll be fine," Chopper said. "Some concussions and broken bones, but nothing serious."

Izuku let out a sigh of relief. His first real fight after Doflamingo, and he had kept himself in control. Remembering the letter in his pocket, Izuku walked over to Franky and pulled him out of the crater by his tattered shirt. Franky gave him a sullen glance through his dented face and said, "This was all my idea. Leave the others out of this."

"Franky, no!" the thugs shouted. "You can't have him!"

"Shut up!" Franky shouted at them. "I gotta take responsibility for this. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I ran away again." He turned his attention back to Izuku. "Go ahead, do your worst!"

Izuku took a deep breath, Franky tensed, and his family of thugs and hoodlums begged him for mercy.

"The Puffing Tom brought in the final piece of his greatest puzzle."

Franky looked at him like he had just grown a second head, and Izuku wondered if he had said it wrong. Then Franky groaned. "Why didn't you say that earlier? You're Roger Pirates?"

The entire Franky Family still awake to hear Franky's words went pale as a sheet. Izuku shrugged and said, "Sort of. We did sail with them for a while."

"No wonder why you kicked our asses. So, are you that Hatsume guy? Cause I gotta say, that blueprint was some wild stuff. I had to custom-make all those tiny little spark plugs, do you have any idea how fiddly the wiring was for those?"

"I never bothered making one from scratch," Mei answered. "Did you get the wiring thin enough?"

"Thin enough to sew with." Franky looked her over and said, "Damn. I lost that bet with Iceburg."

Izuku helped Franky up, and he dusted the gravel off his shirt. "I got it ready in the back. Want to take a look?"

Izuku felt like he was back on the cloud island as Franky lead the Straw Hats to the back of their abode. Franky shoved a couch aside and twisted a hatch open.

"Tom warned me to make sure nobody knew I was making this thing. Word got out about the letter, and the Marines would break it if they knew Roger wanted it made."

As Izuku stared up at the tarp-covered vehicle, oddly reminiscent of the moment Mei unveiled the DeLorean a year and another universe ago, Izuku felt tears welling up in his eyes. This was it. After months of sailing and training and fighting for his life, he was finally going home.

"Super!" Franky shouted, pulling on the tarp. "Presenting the Hatsume Industries mail-order baby, the Super Franky Truck-Kun of Universe Hopping!"

As the tarp fell, Izuku's hopes and dreams came crashing down. In the flickering workshop lights, in all its sparkling chrome glory, adorned with hot-rod flames and a mohawk atop the roof of the vehicle, with four wheels taller than Izuku and a step-ladder bolted to the side to climb aboard, stood a monster truck.

"So," Franky said, "Pretty cool, right? I took a few liberties with the external design, but the internals are all built to spec."

"Cool?" Mei asked, eyes twinkling. "It's amazing! I always wanted to drive one of these as a kid."

Izuku gaped at her. "But Mei, it's the wrong kind of truck!"

"A truck is a truck."

"It's all wrong! How are we supposed to get back home with this?"

Mei hugged a tire and glared at him. "Quit it, you're making truck-kun feel bad."

Izuku pinched the bridge of his nose. "Mei. Yes, it looks nice, but we need to get home."

"Oh relax. The engine and transmission are all here. If it doesn't work, I can always re-design it."

Izuku felt his heart rate settling back to non-panicking levels. "Alright. yeah, that'll work." He turned back to Franky and said, "I'm really sorry about that, it's great, really, I just got worried for a second."

"No sweat, little dude. You got a lot riding on this, right? Well, when it comes to building machines, you won't find anyone better in the world short of Vegapunk."

Izuku nodded and turned to the other Straw Hats. "Well, I guess this will be goodbye."

"Wait, what?" Chopper asked. "What do you mean you're leaving?"

Izuku blinked. "Did we forget to tell you that Mei and I are from another world?"

"Wha?!"

One condensed version of their journey later, Izuku said, "It was really fun sailing with you guys. I don't want to leave, but I need to go home. I need to make sure my mom's okay, and I'm going to be a hero."

"You can be a hero here," Chopper said, tears streaming down his face. "Don't go, you're the only smart person on this ship."

"Hey!" Nami shouted. "Don't lump me in with Luffy and Zoro."

Izuku knelt down and gave Chopper a hug. "Robin's super smart. At least, she reads a lot of books. And you're a better doctor than me anyways. I can barely keep these guys in one piece."

Chopper sniffled and said, "I could still use some help."

"You'll do just fine. I know it."

Nami crossed her arms. "You still owe me for boarding that machine of yours in the hold. Do you have any idea how much gold we missed out on because of that?"

"Hey, we let you fill the whole thing. You even put bars under the seats."

"It still took up some space. So, you better come back and pay off the interest sometime."

Izuku grinned and said, "You bet."

Zoro nodded. "Don't settle for anything less than being the best in your world."

For a moment, Izuku felt daunted by the prospect. Best in Japan was ambitious enough, but the world? Then he grinned and shot back, same to you."

Having said farewell to the rest of the crew, Izuku turned to Luffy. Thinking back on their long journey, from their first trip up Reverse Mountain, to the Whitebeards, training with Rayleigh, Jaya, and the Golden Lions, Izuku had no idea what to say.

"You're leaving now?" Luffy asked.

"Yep."

Luffy scratched his head. "How are you going to do that from all the way down here?"

For a moment, Izuku had no idea what he was talking about. Then he looked around. Franky's workshop was buried underground, with solid stone walls on all sides. Izuku facepalmed. "That's just great. How are we supposed to get the truck outside?"

Everyone looked at Franky. Franky raised his arms and said, "Whoa, don't look at me, I had to build it down here in case someone came snooping around."

"So what, are we supposed to take it all apart, bring it upstairs, and put it back together again?"

Mei gave the monster truck a speculative look. "We could also add some more cylinders, bring it up to a V12."

"Mei no."

"Mei yes."

"Or," Franky added, "We could bust a hole in the ceiling and not spend weeks on this. I'm good with that."

Luffy cracked his knuckles. "Okay." He threw a punch up, and everyone ducked for cover as the ceiling crashed down on them.

Coughing and waving away the dust, Franky shouted, "I didn't mean to do it right now, jeez! Ah well, the carpet was getting smelly anyways."

Luffy wrapped his arms around the chassis, gritted his teeth, and hoisted it to the top floor. The boards creaked ominously, and the Franky Family nervously backed away from the area.

"So, how does it work, exactly?" Franky asked. "I mean, yeah , I get how it moves, but nothing I saw in there makes me think it would send you to another dimension."

"We don't know," Mei answered. "It just does. That's the almighty Truck-kun for you."

"Huh. Are you going to do it right now?"

"Well, we need to replicate how we did it the first time."

Izuku immediately grasped the problem. "We just hit eighty-eight miles an hour when we hit that truck."

"Right. We need to start time traveling the instant we collide with the truck."

"Can we even accelerate that fast? How much road would we need?"

"A hundred meters. Maybe less."

Franky hummed thoughtfully to himself. "You just need to go really fast, right? We could use the water rails."

"And that train we saw?" Mei asked. "That one wouldn't go fast enough."

Franky grinned. "Then it's a good thing I have one that goes even faster."

"How fast?"

"Too fast. It doesn't have brakes."

Izuku put his face in his hands. "We're really going to Back to the Future III this one, aren't we?"

While everyone else looked confused, Mei proudly beamed and said, "Great Scott!"

"Well, if we got all that figured out," Franky said, "We gotta talk payment."

Nami glared and pointedly put her hands on Luffy's shoulders. "After everything you tried to pull, you still want our money?"

"Whoa, hold on, just hear me out. My old master, Tom, built the only ship in the world to ever sail the entire Grand Line, the Oro Jackson. I want to follow in his footsteps. The only ship tough enough to make it all the way needs to be built with the greatest wood in the world, from the Adam tree. Wood like that is extremely rare and almost never shows up, but enough of it to make a ship just dropped on the black market."

"And you need our money to buy it."

Franky turned out his pockets. "My boys and I aren't exactly great at saving up. But anyways, I want to build the ship, then find a crew crazy enough to make it all the way. Marines, pirates, whoever sails it doesn't matter. All that matters is they make the voyage with pride."

"And you want us to sail it," Zoro added.

Franky pointed finger-guns at him. "Exactamundo! You're in need of a new ship. Get me enough money to buy that Adam wood, and I'll take care of the rest."

"And why would we do that when we can get a ship from Iceburg?"

Franky tsked and shook his head. "First off, little lady, Iceburg and I learned from the same guy. I'm every bit as good as he is."

"He has an entire team of professionals behind him."

"But he doesn't have the best wood in the world. Marines would be all over him like flies on a turd if he had so much as a scrap of that stuff in his shipyard."

"Now hold on!" Usopp shouted, pointing at the Merry's figurehead. "Are you all really considering getting a new ship? The Merry's right there! If this wood's so great, let's rebuild her with it!"

"I could rebuild her from scratch with new wood," Franky said. "But if I did that, would it still be her? Every single board, from her keel to her topmast, would have to be replaced. I'd even have to redo the figurehead. And don't say I can save it, at best I'd have to carve new wood to fit the parts cracked beyond repair, and every time you'd look at it, you'd remember what I did. Even if I remade her perfectly, down to every last plank, would it still be her?"

Usopp choked up. Franky looked them over and said, "I'd offer to let you stay the night, but, well…" He gestured at the place. Another plank fell from the hole in the floor, and their sofas were piled high with bruised and unconscious members of the Franky Family.

"That's fine," Nami said with a grimace. "I'm sure we can find somewhere not too expensive."

Street after street, inns and motels took one look at Izuku and Luffy's faces, hid behind the counter, and politely begged them to leave. After a dozen rejections, Nami eventually relented and flashed an entire suitcase full of money. As hungrily as the man looked at the money, he eventually tore his gaze away and showed them the door.

"This is ridiculous!" Nami shouted. "What's next? Are we going to have to knock on people's houses and ask if we can crash with them?"

Luffy shrugged. "We could just sleep in the street."

Nami gave him an aghast look, and Izuku matched her horror. Before Luffy could walk them through how to scope out a warm and comfy place to sleep in a tree, Robin caught sight of them and brought Sanji over.

"Is something the matter?" Robin asked. "What did they say about the Merry?"

Usopp's face crumpled. Luffy said, "We need somewhere to sleep, but nobody's sharing their bed and the trees are too short around here."

"Well, I happen to know a friend. He runs a bar, and he's got spare rooms upstairs. I'm sure he'd let us use them if I asked."

Robin led them to an unnamed bar ran by an amiable man with hair like bull's horns. After greeting Robin like an old friend, Blueno led them to a table and offered them the first round on the house.

Nami peered suspiciously at the bartender as he cleaned glasses. "Why would anyone give pirates free booze?"

"It's actually an old trick of Blueno's," Robin said. "He makes the first round free, then charges more each round. Pirates get too drunk to notice or start buying his 'expensive' liquor." With a chuckle, she said, "Though, I think this time he's doing it to be nice."

Nami told the group how much they made off the gold from Sky Island, and how they would split it after they bought the ship. Zoro and Sanji both complained loudly that more than half would stay with the ship, but Nami pointedly asked the cook how much it cost to feed them all.

Once she laid out their options for ships, Usopp explained how he got abducted by the Franky Family after bravely fighting off a hundred of them, and Luffy told a very animated story of Izuku zapping around and punching them all that made Izuku blush. Izuku kept his voice low, glancing at Blueno to make sure he wasn't paying attention, as he shared the news about the truck and their impending trip home. Sanji sobbed over Mei's imminent departure, while Robin asked additional questions about the machine and its blueprints with growing concern on her face.

Once the sun dipped below the sea and their mugs ran empty, Blueno gave them each a room, even after Izuku insisted they could share to not take up as much space. The rooms were spartan and cramped, barely big enough to accommodate a single bed, and Blueno explained he kept them for anyone who passed out in the bar.

Sleep did not come easily to Luffy. After months aboard pirate ships, the room felt deathly quiet, and even by ship standards the room was suffocatingly claustrophobic. Then there were memories of home flashing through his head, and a tingling giddiness that came with the knowledge that he'd be back home tomorrow.

He had finally drifted off to sleep when he felt the bed swing out from under him. Izuku reached up, trying to catch himself on the edge of the abyss that swallowed him up, but the door swung shut before he could reach it.

After a short drop, he landed on a solid steel surface. Izuku looked around, but the room he landed in was pitch black. He lit his arms up with sparks, and the green flashes of light bounced off the cramped metal walls around him. He knocked on one and heard a dull, ponderous ring. The metal felt at least an inch thick all the way around and didn't even have an air vent.

"Hello?" Izuku asked. "What do you want with me?"

No one answered. Izuku felt his breathing quicken. He reminded himself that he'd only use up the oxygen faster, and unsurprisingly, that did nothing to stop his rising panic levels. He punched the wall harder, pounding until the tiny chamber rang like a church bell.

"You bastards!" Izuku roared. "Let. Me. Out!"

His hand phased into the metal. Izuku yelped and leapt away. He looked at his hand, then back at the wall. Metal conducted electricity. He was made of electricity. He could pass through the wall, couldn't he? But what if he got stuck? Or spread too thin and couldn't bring himself together?

Izuku took another gulp of air and numbly realized he was running out of oxygen. And if he was in here, running out of air, what about the others? What about Mei?

Izuku cracked his knuckles and glared at the wall. He took a deep breath, using up the last of his air, and charged forward. He closed his eyes right before he hit the metal and felt himself slide inside. His body felt fluid, like he was the water in a cube-shaped glass, free to zip around as he wished. He brushed against the cube's surface, pushed against the air, and formed a hand. Pushing against the surface, Izuku brought out an arm, then the shoulder, then pushed out his head and gasped for air.

He peered around the bedroom. The suitcase full of money was exactly where he left it, at the foot of the bed. After another few gulps of air, Izuku pulled the rest of himself out and stood up on wobbling legs.

Not even waiting to catch his breath, Izuku ran into Mei's room. Her bed was empty, the sheets ruffled as though she had just left it. Izuku yanked up the mattress and saw a circular hole in the metal, welded open with one of Mei's Flame Dials.

Mei blinked up at him. "Oh hey, Izuku. Did they get you too?"

"Yep. Turns out I can move through metal."

"Cool. Turns out these babies come pre-packed with their own oxygen and have an adjustable nozzle. Do you think anyone else made it out?"

A deafening clang of metal came from down the hall, followed by Luffy's triumphant roar.

The three of them took Mei's Dials and welded open the others. Zoro had cut halfway through his box before his swords got stuck, while Sanji left sizable dents in his own box. Usopp Nami, and Chopper had all passed out, but after some mouth to mouth, they coughed back to life. Chopper fussed over all of them, prescribing treatment even as his head spun, while Nami counted every Beri in the briefcases and hugged them close to her chest, thanking every god she could name that they hadn't been stolen.

When they opened Robin's box, she was nowhere to be found.


A/N: I've been waiting a long time to make that Back to the Future III reference. The moment I had this crazy isekai/time travel idea, I knew exactly how they were getting back home. Of course, it's not going to be that easy.

Nexusplayer: "Oh I also must ask for a lightning power of Izukus. Being able to absorb energy and furthermore kinetic energy. Or mabye lightning dragon roar?

Bardothren: considering the Rumble Fruit didn't get a whole lot of screentime canon-wise, I will take a little liberty with Izuku's Quirk, but I don't intend to go much farther than what Enel demonstrated – lightning abilities, Logia, weakness to insulating materials like rubber, storm manipulation, and lightning-fast speed (literally). Suffice it to say, I will be making a few extrapolations from that.

TheGreatBubbaJ: "Franky is going to spooge himself when he sees the mecha. They almost have another piece of the puzzle to get home, but they still have to stick around until at least the Red Line eh?"

Bardothren: thank you very much for reminding me how mecha-obsessed the Straw Hats are. I'll have to put that in somewhere.

ProjectIceman: "Ah. So the Merry still ended up pretty damaged. In fact, it seemed like it suffered worse than canon. We CANNOT allow the Government to get those blueprints that Mei made. Imagine considering what they are currently doing in the manga right now

Bardothren: Blame Nami's greed. The Merry had a much bigger burden heading to Water Seven this time. And yes, it would simply be terrible if the World Government somehow got their hands on trucks in a world that's 98% ocean.