Chapter 3

.::Not All Lies::.

All Might is not dead.

The words kept repeating in Izuku's head as he stared at the letter, a silent mantra to combat the numbness creeping over him from that last sentence.

Of all the claims in the letter so far, that had to be the one he despised the most, the most ridiculous and unbelievable one of all. His fingers scrunched up the paper as he glared at the offending sentence, his face twisting into a scowl.

Even now he could feel the power of One for All flowing under his skin, indisputable proof of his meeting with the man. If All Might had truly died when he was seven, then there was no way Izuku could have gotten that power. Therefore, the letter had to be lying. Nothing but lies, period. End of story.

Except...

His gaze flitted upwards, honing in on the mirror where the pictures were taped. He couldn't see them from the bed, but he clearly remembered the unfamiliar picture of him and his parents. Even though he didn't recognize it, he had no doubts that it was his real parents in it. His mother's eyes had that warm joy and love tinged with an almost sad sort of glow from her constant concern over him, and his dad's grin had that relieved, content slant he always had when he managed to actually be there for a big event.

No shape-shifting quirk could mimic those sort of expressions, the genuine emotion conveyed in the minutest details of their faces.

So why couldn't he remember the photo?

His breathing had become fast and uneven again, he realized. He grit his teeth and forced himself to calm down, looking down at the letter with a frown.

The idea of All Might dying still made him equally furious and scared, but he couldn't let his emotions get the best of him. He needed to keep on reading, and so he did. This time he did so with a resolve to finish it, determined not to stop until he reached the end.

'After that, everything changed. The world's balance shifted without him, and villains became more commonplace. When we were around twelve, UA High School shut down after a group of villains (NOT Tomura-nii or the Villain Alliance!) attacked the entrance exam, slaughtering almost everyone taking it. I think that made the imbalance even worse. Society hasn't fallen apart, but it's still not as safe as when we were little.

A lot of heroes have died or left the scene since then. There aren't many agencies that operate with a public headquarters anymore, too many attacks on them with too much collateral damage. Most heroes are more underground now. Some still talk to media, but they're way more secretive after a lot of bad incidents with families and friends getting attacked. Rescue heroes like Thirteen get left alone though, since they don't fight Villains, so that's good at least.

But there's a lot less people becoming heroes now, because it's becoming more dangerous. Sometimes even kids with strong quirks will get targeted by villains, so lately everyone—hero or civilian—is trying to keep a lower profile. Some people become vigilantes though, which is a bit... messy.

Society's kinda messy, but it's starting to sort of calm down, I guess. Because heroes aren't as common anymore police are allowed to use their quirks too, and heroes mostly focus on the bigger crimes. There's some sort of massive underground hero network, sort of like a resistance that targets the major villain groups, but we don't know many details. Tomura-nii is really frustrated by that.

Tomura-nii and the Villain Alliance are kind of new, but they've gotten a reputation. Because of that, we—as in, you—are also sort of wanted. Most people don't know who we are and there aren't any public wanted posters of us, but we do know our name's been leaked to that underground network. Actually, during the last episode I had, a new hero infiltrated one of our other bases and tried to get us to leave with him. Kurogiri stopped him before we left and the hero got away, but it was a close call. That's the other reason I decided to write this, I guess, to prevent a repeat of that.

That should cover all the big stuff. Depending on how much you remember I know it might be hard to believe all of this, but it's true. If you need proof, our 'Hero Analysis for the Future' books will fill you in on who's dead and who's alive. They're on the bookshelf in our room, I update them whenever someone dies. I also started listing villain quirks in them, so you can use them to help get familiar with everyone here. And if you still have doubts, you can just go online with our phone or laptop to look this up. I mean, villains can't fake the entire internet, right?

Other than that, the rest of this letter will just be a list of major ongoing events in our lives that you should probably know about. I'll date them and cross out stuff that's not relevant anymore, but hopefully there won't be anything urgent. Tomura-nii tries to keep us out of Alliance business since we're, you know. Quirkless. Guess that's one perk, right? Heh.

Anyways, good luck Izuku. Your memories will come back eventually, so just put up with it for a bit. There's a map of the base in Journal 2 if you need help getting around.'

After that, the next page contained a list of dates and events, several of them crossed out just as promised. Izuku ignored it for the moment, getting up from the bed to stalk straight to the bookshelf. When he got close he could recognize one shelf to be populated with his Hero Analysis notebooks, only it contained far more volumes than he remembered keeping. Pulling out the one on the far end, he saw the title "QUIRK ANALYSIS VOLUME 31" on the cover in his handwriting.

The difference in the title made him frown, immediately doubtful of its veracity based on that alone. When he opened it though he quickly realized why he might have changed the title. The first page showed a rough sketch of Toga Himiko, accompanied by a detailed analysis of her Quirk. Definitely not a hero. It didn't tell him anything new, just further re-confirmed Toga could transform into people by drinking their blood.

He read over the notes closely, looking for the smallest discrepancy, but even so he couldn't help but notice how much it fit his own voice. It included speculations about the exact limitations of her Quirk, and comments about how she seemed unstable and a bit creepy, but 'Tomura-nii promised he won't leave her alone with me too much.' That made him blanch a bit, and he put the notebook back before turning to the earlier ones.

According to the letter, he ran away at age eight and started living with Shigaraki then. If Izuku seriously attempted to run away, he couldn't imagine not bringing his notebooks with him, a suspicion he confirmed when he pulled out the first one to find the colorful notebook he'd received in preschool with his childish scrawl dubbing it as Hero Analysis for the Future, Volume One. For the time being he set it on another shelf and turned to the other notebooks, scrounging his memories for hints as to when he wrote each one.

The letter noted two major points of divergence in his life, the most obvious being when his parents died at age eight. Before that though, All Might died when he was seven. The volume from that time would be the most impacted by it, and have the most concrete evidence of the change in history.

He couldn't remember exactly when he wrote each one, having spent years accumulating his analysis books, but he vaguely recalled being excited when his mom gave him an especially nice All Might notebook for his seventh birthday. Back then he'd promised to set it aside for when he would start Volume Six, though ultimately he'd dedicated it purely to the number one Hero. At the time Izuku had been halfway through the previous one, but he couldn't remember when he moved on.

Hesitating, he reached out and pulled Volume Five. The letter didn't say when All Might died; it could have been anywhere from a week later to just days before his eighth birthday. He was pretty sure he managed to hit Volume Six before his next birthday though, so Volume Five would be his best bet. Taking a deep breath, he opened the cover and looked at the page.

The first page had a drawing of a newbie hero who debuted the day he got the notebook, a man named Penn who could manipulate ink. Izuku remembered his career ended only two years later after his hometown got struck by a tsunami, suffering serious injuries while rescuing people that landed him in the hospital for two months. Afterwards he announced his retirement, explaining his parents had died in the tragedy and he wanted to support his younger sister who had also been seriously injured then.

It had been one of the first times Izuku could remember a hero retiring in his lifetime. Heroes rarely retired so early, so it had caused a large stir in the media. Later when he got older he'd learn some people had harshly criticized his decision as selfish, but he recalled being in awe that even his reason for retiring—to care for his sister—had been heroic. It had been one of his first looks at the real-world risks of heroics.

However, according to this notebook, that hadn't happened.

'DEAD,' declared messily scrawled writing right next to his name. He felt a chill run down his spine, and he looked down to find the word repeated all around the edges of the sketch, filling the margins and running off the page. The strokes were rough and jagged, clearly written under great stress. In a few places he could even see small holes in the page where the pencil had pushed hard enough to tear. The few spaces void of the word told of a tragic battle with Toxic Chainsaw that went horribly wrong.

Stomach twisting in discomfort, Izuku began turning the pages and felt his horror only grow. Several of the entries had been similarly edited and marked, naming hero after hero as dead or forcibly retired. Some had the same messy scrawl and rips, but perhaps more disturbing were the ones with much neater editing. A more mature and steady hand calmly noted "dead" next to names along with a date, and then added notes in the margins on how they died, or a comment saying "check volume X for details". The sheer orderliness of the writing on those entries spoke volumes of the lack of emotion he'd felt writing them, as if he'd gotten used to it.

His hands stilled as he reached another such entry, but this time not because of who was on it, but who was next. He had referenced his old notebooks enough to have a vague sense of where to find each hero, and the person on next page had been the most heavily referenced one of all. Swallowing, he slowly turned the page, genuinely dreading what he'd find.

A childish drawing of All Might stared up at him, grinning with a too-big smile and cartoonishly large muscles. However, the lines had become warped, the paper littered with long-dried wet spots that distorted the pencil markings. Tearstains, he realized. Below the drawing, in far-too tiny and shaky handwriting, was the word, "Dead."

Seeing that word—so small and feeble-looking even on paper—made his stomach drop. The page next to it, which had once contained the first of several pages of excited scribbling about his then-mysterious quirk, was gone. Not just ripped out, but removed entirely, not even a shred of ripped paper left in the spine hinting at its existence. As far as he could tell all of the pages in the section were like that, the next one instead blank but allowing him to faintly glimpse a drawing of the next hero on the other side.

Staring down at it, Izuku felt... hollow. While part of his brain still screamed it was all a lie, a fabrication to fool him into believing the letter's story, something about looking at his notebook made it actually feel more real. He had never realized just how much emotion could be conveyed through handwriting alone, and this notebook had it in spades.

It's my writing for sure, he thought distantly. But was it really? While it definitely hadn't been a mere forgery of his handwriting, that didn't make it real. It could be an illusion set in his mind, pulling details from his memories to create a believable lie. Of course, he didn't know of any Quirks that could create such a heavily detailed illusion—usually they tended to be small and much more limited, not one that could alter a person's entire perception of the world like they'd been thrown into another dimension—

And once more, his thoughts ground to a halt.

Another dimension.

It... it wasn't unheard of, a Quirk that could warp to other dimensions. The ones he knew of involved personal pocket dimensions though, not some alternate version of reality. But even so, Izuku couldn't outright dismiss the idea. The science behind Quirks still had a lot of room for discovery. Brand new mutations and never before-seen abilities seemed to pop up every day, and depending on how such a Quirk functioned, he could see someone disguising it as a different type of Quirk altogether.

If such a Quirk did exist and had been used on him, then it probably operated by jumping to alternate timelines. It seemed like the simplest idea, weird as it was to use "simple" here. Instead of several massive changes like people having different Quirks—or even no Quirks at all—it would be easier to simply go to a timeline where a single event had changed. And he didn't need to think long to figure out what caused the major divergence: All Might's death.

A world without All Might was beyond his imagination. In Izuku's world, the man had just retired a few short months earlier, and they were only just starting to see the effects of the void left by his departure from the hero scene. He couldn't begin to picture the ramifications of him dying suddenly in battle, but the letter's description of society in this world seemed to fit the bill.

Turning the idea over in his head, Izuku frowned and glanced to the side, his gaze resting on the laptop on the desk. The letter had said that if he had any doubts he could look it up online, and he had no better ideas. After all, as his handwriting pointed out, no villain could fake the entire internet. Closing the notebook and sliding it back onto the shelf, he quietly plodded over to the desk and slid into the chair before lifting the lid.

His own laptop had an All Might background, but this one had a picture of some video game character he didn't recognize. He shuddered slightly for reasons he didn't really get, and quickly opened the browser and began clicking around. He recognized a lot of the sites on the bookmark list as ones he had often frequented, but also saw several unfamiliar ones. Clicking on a news site he trusted, he skimmed the selection of headlines with a keen eye.

Nothing particularly stood out—at least, not in the way he'd hoped. The top story noted a kidnapping attempt dated the prior day that had been thwarted at the last minute, and he opened it to find a recounting about a recent string of kidnappings. All of them targeted children and teenagers with strong or useful Quirks, leading to speculation that it was the work of a Villain organization trying to recruit people.

Izuku felt his stomach churn with discomfort, a visceral sense of unease that left him shivering. He quietly exited the article and skimmed the other headlines, before abandoning the news site entirely and opening a new tab. He didn't know what bookmark to check next, but the browser opened a search engine automatically with the tab, the blank field calling for him to type something.

His first choice was obvious: UA High School. The letter said it closed about four years ago, and he couldn't believe that—just couldn't. But when he hit 'enter,' a string of articles appeared with titles like 'Tragedy of UA' and 'Massacre Closes Top Hero School.' His stomach roiled at the headlines, feeling the blood drain from his face as he saw thumbnails of photos full of smoking buildings and people. Swallowing harshly, he clicked one of the articles and began reading. Then he clicked another, and another.

By the time he finally closed the browser half an hour later his mood had plummeted, his blood ice cold and just feeling generally numb. The sheer volume of articles and information had erased any doubts about this potentially being an illusory world or some dream. No illusory Quirk could conjure so many different articles with such extensive detail; even the strongest illusions had their limits, and creating a full-blown world with its own, unique history was definitely beyond any he'd heard of.

Izuku closed the laptop silently, his mind reeling as he returned to the bed where he'd left the letter. Picking it up gingerly, he skimmed over his writing with a more somber mood. He still had all sorts of questions about his situation, still didn't know how this was happening, but the letter was his only real source for his personal circumstances. With that thought he went to the back and looked at the list of major 'current' events, noting the first had been dated February of the previous year, and began reading it almost numbly.

A majority of it had been crossed out, suggesting the events were "finished" or at least no longer relevant. He struggled to make out some of the crossed-out words anyway, the slashes rendering some of the kanji frustratingly difficult to read, before finally giving up and flipping closer to the end of the list. The last several events were unmarked and easily legible, and he went back to the earliest one and started reading.

Not many of them seemed particularly notable. Just warnings to be careful if he went out due to increased hero activity in the area, a somber announcement that someone with a name he didn't recognize had died, and a notice to check his journal about a potential new recruit who made him feel a bit uncomfortable ("I feel bad about how everyone's treating him, but I might be able to be friends with him if he can warm up to me").

When Izuku reached the final item he noticed it was dated November 9, about a week before the last date he remembered. Realizing he didn't know the date (or time, for that matter), he glanced around the room and quickly spied a calendar hanging on the wall above his bed next to a poster of Selkie. Each day had been clearly marked off, identifying today as November 14. That... matched up with his memories alright.

With that settled he turned back to read the final item only to freeze. Eyes going wide, he jumped up and ran to the bookshelf, pulling out the notebooks until he found one marked Journal 2. Practically ripping the cover open, he found a hand-drawn map on the second page and quickly analyzed it to get his bearings before racing out of the room, holding it over one arm. The letter lay on his bed all but forgotten, the final event still ringing in his mind:

'November 9: The League captured Kacchan to try to recruit him. He's in Room 7. I don't know what to do.'

So, fun story: my laptop is currently in the shop because I dropped it and damaged the screen. The data on it is fine and I'll get it back Monday or Tuesday, and I had a copy of this chapter on another computer to edit. But yeah, friendly reminder to ALWAYS back up your files people.

Otherwise, behold, the first of many mind-screws for Izuku! Any guesses on how the meeting will go?