"What in the world is this?" Izuku stared in consternation at the hefty, brown envelope sticking out of his mailbox. "'Special courier... to Midoriya Izuku? Not my parents?'"

"No idea 'Zuku," Kacchan leaned over his shoulder. "Grab it and bring it along. We can open it at my place, come on."

The two of them weren't as close friends as they had been in their first year at Aldera Junior High but they still worked on homework together and orbited the same circles of friends, so after school meetups were not unusual.

Izuku set the package on the living room table before joining Kacchan in stalking down some snacks. "That was a weird history class today, huh? Guess it's a good day to talk about it, the anniversary of Utapa."

"Yeah. Weird to think it's been so long... It's hard to imagine people killing each other over quirks..."

"People are and always have been idiots," the blonde shrugged. "Doesn't change. It's just the current thing they're being stupid about that they switch up."

"You might be right," Izuku hummed as he sat down on the couch and regarded the forgotten envelope before ripping it open. "This weird thing... Huh. It's just a letter and a bunch of notes and... a snow globe?"

"Let me see that letter. Oh, wow. That's weird."

"What?"

"The handwriting on that letter looks a lot like yours, doesn't it?"

"It's not like my handwriting is super distinctive."

"It kind of is, though. I know you probably don't see it 'cause you're you, but you write kind of fancy, all those little waves like you're really excited to be writing and keep stabbing the paper psychotically."

"Hey!"

"It's a valid description," Katsuki folded his arms, daring Izuku to challenge him.

"Whatever."

"Come on, what's it say?"

"'Hello, Midoriya Izuku. If you aren't Midoriya Izuku, I'd ask you not to read this note. It's not meant for you. It should not even have been delivered; I was very clear with my instructions for the service, but I suppose it has been a long time. I should be grateful that it has been delivered at all. The company could have gone out of business for all I know. I recall that it still existed when I was your age,' wait, what? 'but that's no guarantee of how things... will go... in this... timeline'? Again, what?"

"The hell is this?"

"I don't..."

"Just keep reading."

"'It will be hard for me to prove my claims. There are things that I know about me that I've never told anyone else, but the world is so different as a result of my actions that I can't be sure they will be true for you. I'll get to the point. You are Midoriya Izuku and so am I, although that was not the name by which the world knew me. The world knew me as Fossa, General... of the MLA.'" Izuku's jaw dropped. "This has to be a weird prank, right?"

Katsuki's eyebrows had migrated nearly to his hairline. "Probably, but I mean... look at that first picture. That is Fossa, isn't it? With Destro, and Arch?" Fossa was draping his arms over the other generals' shoulders and pulling them close so they could all fit in the picture. Behind them a huge mountain, maybe the Matterhorn, loomed in the mist. "I mean, it could be fake but this really looks like a vintage photo, and here are the negatives."

"So... if I take this seriously... Fossa from the MLA sent me a letter... to tell me that he is me?"

"Maybe you should keep reading."

"'I'm not literally you, in the sense that you're not going to become me. I'm from a different timeline. In the timeline that I came from, the MLA lost the war.' Then how--"

"Just keep reading, 'Zuku," Katsuki smacked him lightly.

"'I hope your Japan is better than the Japan where I grew up. I was born quirkless,'" yeah, that tracked at least, "and discrimination against quirkless people was widespread and vicious. For most of my life I was friendless.'"

"What the hell! Hey, I didn't--where was I then? I don't give a fuck about quirks or not. I mean nobody does... not in this world anyway."

"'Nobody wanted to be associated with me. Strong quirks were idolized, so-called creepy quirks were demonized, and society was stratified into heroes and villains. Despite the underlying quirk supremacism that festered and boiled and eventually spawned a horrific civil war, it was illegal to show quirks in public, illegal to be yourself.'"

"Other Izuku's Japan sucked big time," Katsuki muttered.

"You don't seriously believe this is real, do you?"

Katsuki waved his hand noncommittally. "Take a look at this shipping certificate. Look at the post date, how long this has been in storage waiting to be delivered."

"That could be faked, too."

"It's gonna' be trivial to confirm that this is as old as it says it is," Katsuki shook his head. "And look at Fossa's hair, and his eyes. I joked in class that he kinda' looked like you."

"His face is totally different!"

Katsuki shrugged. "There's a shop down the road that'll do a permanent nose job in ten minutes for fifty bucks."

"He's claiming to be me from an alternate universe! And, yeah, I suppose I can think of a few stranger things that have happened because of weird quirk interactions and I suppose..." Fossa had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the MLA War, no name, no history, no explanation, and the tide of the war had begun to turn sharply in the MLA's favor shortly thereafter.

"Whatever. Keep reading, will ya'? If it's a prank it's a good one and we ought to read the whole thing and appreciate the hard work, right?"

"I... guess..."

"'I wanted to be a hero--special, quirk-using law enforcement--even though I was quirkless. I got caught up in a grudge match between one of the few surviving MLA generals in my world and their enemy All For One, who had survived the war in my timeline and gone on to rule the criminal underground of Japan decade after decade. I became something of a neo-MLA fanatic. By an accident of fate I found myself spying on Dr. Garaki Kyudai's insane attempt to create a time machine, and when he tried to use it I turned it against him, pulling Destro out of the MLA War to destroy the doctor's work. When given the opportunity to run for my life and likely be caught and killed for my treachery or return home with Destro, I decided to seek my future in the past.

"'It was a difficult decision. Sometimes in the middle of the night I can't help but stare at the ceiling and think about them, the people I left behind. I abandoned my Kacchan. I don't know for sure that he survived the civil war in my universe, and if he did he certainly never forgave me for leaving him alone. I will die long before my mother is born. She'll never even know what became of me.'"

Izuku coughed, trying to clear his throat. The sorrow leapt straight from the yellowed paper to his brain.

"It's alright, 'Zuku," Kacchan patted him on the head.

"He said Kacchan."

"Yeah, either the prankster knows you hella' well or this is the real deal."

"'There is an unending well of regret in me for the life I could have had, for the path I shunned, but I'm very proud of what I accomplished along the path I did not shun. We won the war, as you well know. We've worked tirelessly to make sure that we really won, that it wasn't just the other side losing. We tore the old institutions down not for the sake of destroying them but because we had new things, better things I hope, things we really, truly believed in that we desperately wanted to put in place of the old rot. We didn't want to watch the world burn. We wanted to watch the new life grow after the fire cleared out the deadwood.'"

"I wonder how long other you spent writing this. It's like reading a poem," Katsuki huffed.

"I would have spent years trying to decide what to say."

"Yeah, that does sound like you."

"'Maybe the world we built has grown old and rotten by your time. Perhaps it's time to purge again, make way for another new world order. Nothing lasts forever, and that's for the best, but I do hope that the world we strove to build lasts through your lifetime, or at least provides a foundation strong enough that some of it can be carried on into the new era, a solid base on which to build even if all of the intricate details we put into place are stripped away and somebody else's architecture layered over all.

"'I hope you will live in a time of prosperity, not rot. I hope you will not know war. I fought through three. I fought in the the MLA war twice (that's a story that nobody needs to hear) and the PLF war once (god willing that war will never come to pass in this world). I was a general in the MLA war, a spy and assassin in the PLF war. I've fought enough for three lifetimes, so I think it's only fair that you should be allowed to know only peace.

"'Three wars was three too many. There are people and places I miss from my world, but the world itself probably deserved to be remade. It was a grim place, too many wicked men and women getting their way decade after decade. Too much prejudice. Too much violence. Too much destruction. Too many people thinking all of those things were good. Too many people glorifying depravity. I don't regret any of the things I have done. I don't regret any of the things I tried to change, although there were times when my attempts to make things right only made everything worse. That's just how it is sometimes. You can't let the fear of failure keep you from trying. If you only take one lesson from this letter, take that one. It took me many long, hard mistakes to learn it.

"'I knew within a year of my journey to the past that I wanted to write you this letter, although it took me a long time to really put into words why. Part of it is lonesomeness, longing for connection to the places and people that I can never have again. By writing these words to you, I feel as if I am finally claiming closure, finally laying to rest the pieces of me that never came to terms with my decision, the parts of me that wanted to face the fire of the PLF War and take my chances to die or live in my own time. Part of it is that I would feel as if I were unfairly deceiving you if I did not attempt to explain myself, who I am, what I did. You deserve to know who you might have been. Part of it is a selfish desire to be remembered by the closest thing to blood family that I will ever have in this timeline. The last motivation may be the strongest in fact. I hope you won't think too poorly of me for it, and I hope that this letter doesn't cause you any distress. I see how it could, depending on the opinion that you hold of the MLA, but rest assured that I am not you. You do not need to feel any sense of connection to me unless you want to. My achievements, failures, and sins are my own.

"'I do hope that this letter won't upset you. I think that I would have been fascinated to receive a time capsule from an alternate universe, time-traveling version of myself.' Yeah. Yeah... fascination is definitely something that I'm feeling right now."

"That looks more like shock than fascination, 'Zuku."

"I can feel more than one thing at a time."

"You believe it's real now, don't you?"

"Yeah. I can... I can tell this is me. Older, more mature, more... scarred I guess but yeah. This is me. Talking to me. From across time and universes and oh my god I'm an MLA general how can this possibly I don't even know what is this I--"

"Calm down." Katsuki squeezed his shoulder. "Like he said, it's not you. You don't have to feel anything like it was you."

"Right... right. I just... it could have been me, right?"

"Any of us could've been anything if things had turned out a certain way," Katsuki shrugged. Inelegantly as it had been said, the sentiment was comforting.

"Okay, okay. It's almost over. Almost the end. 'I got married not too long ago. You probably know about that, or can look it up in a book, given that there were only two grand romances among the MLA generals.' Oh my god I didn't even think about that. Do I have another... not family, lineage?"

Katsuki's eyes flew wide. "Holy shit I don't know. Did Fossa have kids? Adopted kids?"

"'I thought you should have some of the wedding photos, and a few snapshots of the rest of my MLA friends doing decidedly undignified things that the history books probably don't show.'"

"Apparently Destro can't cook," Katsuki said, flipping gingerly through the photos.

"'Here's my new house. I'm going to see if I can arrange for you to inherit it. Don't worry about that just yet. If I pull it off, lawyers will be in touch in a few years.' Wow... that's... what country is that in?"

"Not sure that's in a country proper at all. It might be in Black Forest. How does owning property in Black Forest even work?"

"It can't be in Black Forest. It looks like this was written right after the end of the war and the Black Forest Project hadn't even started then, had it?"

"I... should have paid more attention in class today." Katsuki gingerly flipped to the next photo. "Huh. The MLA generals all went to a rock concert? Wait, that's--argh, so unfair! I love that band and you--other you--got to see them live!"

"It's not like I remember!"

"It's the principal of the thing!"

"Kacchan! That doesn't even make sense!"

"Just finish the letter."

"'I wish I could have known you, seen the kind of world you grew up in, but I will be satisfied with living in my own world. There's plenty to distract me from the curiosity. There is much left to do. I imagine I will be very busy for the next few decades at least.'

"'You are an exceptional person, Midoriya Izuku, capable of incredible things when you put your mind to it. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Don't let anybody or anything, not even this letter, hold you back, or put undue pressure upon you. I hope, beyond all else, that your life is so happy and peaceful that there is no need in it for people like me. Speaking from the past and wishing you all the best in your future, Fossa of the MLA. P.S. I have a second hand quirk that lets me seal living things in suspended animation in glass (it's a long story; somebody blackmailed a version of All For One into giving it to me so that the Soulstealer wouldn't be able to abuse it anymore). I put together this little diorama of my house for you, complete with trees. For the record there are no animals sealed in, just plants, so no need to worry about that.'"

Katsuki and Izuku sat in silence, staring at the paper as Izuku set it down oh so carefully. Izuku picked up the snowglobe, inspecting the trapped trees and flowers and the tiny model house they surrounded. This must have taken ages to put together, regardless of the quirk's power.

"Wow," Katsuki said after a time.

"You can say that again."

"Wow."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

Izuku picked the paper up and began to read the letter over again. "I have no idea how to process this. I don't even know if I should tell my mom and dad, I mean... do you think it would upset them?"

"Do you really want to keep something like this secret from your parents?"

"Not really but... if it were you that got something like this out of the blue?"

"I gotta' admit, I'm feeling really glad that I'm not you right now."

Izuku flicked the blonde on the shoulder. "You're not helping."

There was a whole other version of him from another universe who had died before his parents were born. How was he supposed to process this? "I always thought Fossa was kind of cool," Katsuki continued, "totally badass, you know? Remember him in that documentary? Fought quirkless but constantly wrecked people with really strong quirks, great with strategy, too. I suppose it's a lot to live up to."

"Yeah, but he also... I mean he killed so many people."

"And you haven't and you won't have to. Come on, 'Zuku. I can see your head running in circles. Take a break. We've got snacks to finish. This mess'll still be here when we're through."

"Yeah... yeah alright. I don't have to figure everything out right now." He set the snowglobe down gingerly after casting one more glace upon the tiny trees swept decades through time by a quirk that both was and wasn't Izuku's.