Chapter 6

.::Three Days Later::.

Ochaco liked to think she was pretty smart. Not like a genius or anything, but a little smarter than the average girl. She at least knew enough to get along in life on her own, and make quick connections and decisions during class. For that reason, it didn't take her long to figure out she somehow ended up in an alternate dimension, and after that she somehow managed to keep her cool long enough to not freak out her parents.

In the three days since first waking up in this weird alternate timeline, she had noted a few major differences:

~1. All Might is dead.~

That was the biggest one, and possibly the biggest shock. She had been grateful she'd been in her room alone to process that one, she didn't want to explain to her mom why she had a sudden breakdown while looking at a years-old article on her phone. From there, it seemed everything else sort of spiraled out of control, society-wise anyway. Hence the next point:

~2. The world is a lot more violent.~

Losing the Symbol of Peace in such a violent and sudden fashion led to a much messier situation than their world, apparently. Crime had become much more active than before, and being a Pro Hero was more dangerous than ever, with even their families getting targeted. Apparently kids with strong Quirks also got targeted, since villains liked to recruit them by kidnapping them. So, yeah. It wasn't dystopia-levels yet, but daily life kinda sucked.

~3. UA closed, way back in her first year of middle school.~

That had been another shock, and actually the first one since she'd searched up her high school before All Might. It had been kind of what led her to discover All Might's death, actually. One of the articles about its closure had mentioned the massacre at UA as "the latest tragedy in a string of societal upheavals after All Might's tragic demise." But otherwise, yeah, UA didn't exist anymore, which meant she wasn't a student there. Not that she would be anyway, because...

~4. Ochaco stopped going to school after graduating middle school.~

Weirdly enough, that had been one of the less surprising discoveries, because it had actually been her backup plan if she didn't get into UA. Ochaco had applied to UA and literally no where else, mindful of the high tuitions of other hero schools if she couldn't get in on a scholarship. Japan allowed students to end their education after middle school, giving them the option to get a job instead. Which led her to point five:

~5. Ochaco now works for her family's construction company.~

That had been the main component of her backup plan if she failed the entrance exam at UA. Her Quirk was perfectly suited for construction, and it would save her dad so much money. Absolutely no surprise she'd done just that in a world without UA (or any hero school really) as an option.

But that led to one final point that did surprise her:

~6. Her family is RICH.~

Not rolling-in-money-level rich, but still much more comfortable than her own world. Ochaco had been stunned to realize they lived in a nice two-story house in Musutafu, which had apparently become something like a second Tokyo after the actual Tokyo got mostly destroyed by one spectacular fight between Endeavor and some villain she'd never heard of. (Which, yikes. That was a mess to read about. Thank goodness for evacuation teams and rescue heroes!)

She quickly traced the cause for this particular change to Change Number 1: All Might died, and so crime rose. A rise in crime meant a lot more property damage from villain attacks, and a rise in property damage meant a lot more work for construction companies.

Now, normally, Uraraka Construction didn't have any particular advantages over city-based companies. If anything, they would be at a disadvantage due to a lack of reputation in more urban areas. In the past their best tool had been low prices compared to competition and building a strong rapport with the few customers they did have, which allowed her family to just barely scrape by.

However, in this world her family had a major advantage over the competition: Ochaco's Quirk.

The fact was, setting up heavy construction equipment took time and money. Sometimes just getting that equipment on-site took extra time due to damage to surrounding roads. Ochaco, with her anti-gravity Quirk, minimized the need for the equipment at all, able to make large debris and heavy steel beams essentially weightless with a quick slap to the side.

Her family still used the machinery of course, it's not like she served as a full-time replacement. But Ochaco made the initial steps much faster since she could fit into a lot of places that bulky equipment couldn't. Plus she could start clearing rubble before the machinery arrived, which saved a lot of time since they didn't need to worry about clearing a path for the cranes and stuff.

In short, in a world where property damage was now an almost daily occurrence due to a sharp rise in destructive crime, Ochaco had single-handedly become the most valuable asset a construction company could desire.

For that very reason, her role was a bit of a guarded secret. People knew her father's company worked fast, but not why. That traced back to Change 2: the world was more violent, and some villain groups liked to recruit by kidnapping kids with useful Quirks. Ochaco's Quirk and now-wealthy family would make her at the very least a valuable target for ransom. So if Ochaco's role in her family's newfound fortune was to be discovered, she could guarantee a long string of kidnapping attempts.

That said, adults seemed to be safe (or, safer, at least) from such targeted recruitment and ransom attempts. So as far as their clients knew, they just had a team with a very useful combination of Quirks on hand. Which was true enough. Her dad had carefully screened and hired several workers who had Quirks that would be explicitly useful to their business, as well as keeping on his most trusted workers from her early childhood. The team in this world had been largely set in stone for at least five years now, with one or two additions over the years.

So, how did Ochaco fit into the team from a public standpoint? Simple: her dad wanted her to take over the business, so he had her join him on-site to get real-world management experience. He also played up the "might be kidnapped for ransom" concern (which was totally valid, by the way, and kind of really freaked her out) to make his protectiveness over her seem more legitimate to outsiders and minimize suspicion.

Of course, since her role was so secret, she couldn't be constantly on the site helping out. Instead, she found herself helping for a couple of hours scattered throughout the day, and then shoved into her dad's on-site office for the remainder of the time. Which brought her to a final point—not necessarily a Big Change, but still a noteworthy detail all the same:

~7. She might not be in high school, but she still had a full-time private tutor.~

And that one was totally okay by her.

"Finished!" she chirped as she set down her pencil next to the worksheet, taking a moment to stretch her arms above her head. Across the room Suimin-sensei glanced up from her book with a look of faint surprise before smiling warmly.

"Already?" she asked, getting up to walk over. "I know you're smart, but that was still faster than expected, Ochaco-chan."

"Yeah, I guess it kinda just... clicked," Ochaco replied, laughing sheepishly. In reality, they had already gone over this particular topic in class at UA so it felt more like a review than anything new, but she couldn't tell Suimin-sensei that. The dark-haired woman hummed as she collected the paper, skimming over the answers.

"It looks mostly right, but you got a few wrong," she said, setting it back on the table. Ochaco's smile faded to a look of intense concentration, nodding sharply as they began going over it together.

It had only been three days, but so far Ochaco liked Suimin-sensei. The woman was kind and intelligent, clearly experienced in teaching, but she was also so friendly. She felt almost like an older sister or aunt instead of a teacher, always willing to talk to Ochaco about anything and everything. She even promised to take Ochaco out clothes shopping sometime, she couldn't imagine any of her other teachers doing that.

Yeah, Ochaco thought as Suimin-sensei pushed up her glasses while pointing out one answer, I definitely like her. But even so, that didn't mean she liked the situation.

No matter how much she liked the people, this world still wasn't the one Ochaco knew. She had no idea how to get home, but she had no intentions of staying here forever.

She just wished she knew where to even begin.

"I made lunch!"

Those were the cheery words that accompanied Toga's entrance as she burst through the back door of the bar, a cheery-looking smile on her face as she lofted a large pot for all to see.

Izuku nearly fell off his stool at her abrupt entrance, while Shigaraki's fingers twitched and accidentally touched the glass he'd been holding, causing it to dissolve. The villain scowled as he turned to look at her, annoyance clear on his face as another villain rushed to clean up the spilled drink.

"What now," he questioned crisply. Toga bounced over to them with a smile, Izuku scrambling to move his books and empty glass of apple juice out of the way as she plopped the pot on the counter.

"I had the kitchen to myself so I made stuff!" she told him as she lifted the lid. Izuku, who happened to be closest, craned his neck to peer into the pot and winced at the unidentifiable muck inside. Chunks that might be meat floated in the... well, he was just going to call it "broth" because he didn't know what else to call the chunky, sludge-like substance. He couldn't even name the color, it looked like a cross between brown, red and green, which he didn't know was possible until that moment.

"Ooh, Toga made something?" Twice piped up behind him. "That's so nice! I wouldn't touch anything she makes with a ten foot pole!"

"Eh, I'm sure it's not that bad," Magne interjected lazily, strolling over to look at the meal. "It's not like she'd poison us, right?"

"Poison is lame," Toga confirmed. "Plus that's Aiko-nee's thing, not mine. I way prefer cutting people up." If anyone noticed Izuku scoot away a little at that, they didn't comment on it.

"What is that?" Shigaraki murmured warily, leaning over to peer at the pot suspiciously.

"I dunno," Toga replied with a shrug, a lazy-looking smile stretched across her face. "I just grabbed random stuff in the fridge and threw it in a pot!"

"Which fridge?" Kurogiri asked, joining them on the other side of the counter with a bottle of apple juice. He swept up Izuku's glass and refilled it with a practiced grace, setting it back down in front of the boy without ever looking away from Toga. "We have multiple refrigerators, and I do not recognize these ingredients."

"The white one in the cellar," Toga replied with another shrug.

"...There's a fridge in the cellar?" someone muttered lowly behind Izuku. That was enough for him to figure out the food was bad news (not like its appearance hadn't already been clue enough).

"I believe any food down there would be well past its expiration date," Kurogiri noted, confirming Izuku's suspicions.

"I am not touching that," Shigaraki deadpanned, pointedly turning away from the pot. Izuku felt a jab on his shoulder, nearly falling off the stool in surprise as he turned to see the teen with the poisonous gas Quirk—Mustard, right?—standing behind him, his gas mask absent to reveal a mischievous grin.

"Izuku, I dare you to try it!" he prodded, his eyes almost seeming to sparkle with mischief. Izuku gaped at him in disbelief, an involuntary shudder running down his spine. At that point he felt two hands lay on his shoulders—one finger pointedly hovering just short of contact on each hand—and spin him to face away from the other boy. He turned his head to see Shigaraki looming next to him, staring at Mustard with a flat look.

"He's forbidden to touch it too," he declared flatly. Mustard pouted and grumbled under his breath about him being a 'killjoy' as he turned away, but didn't try to argue. As Shigaraki's hands lifted it took all of Izuku's control not to visibly relax, instead quickly downing the rest of his apple juice and getting up.

"I was gonna head back to my room anyway," he said, surprised his voice didn't come out more strained as he hastily gathered his books. "This one channel's been airing old interviews with Silver Age Heroes during the day lately, and I want to check it out. I think today's got one with Crimson Riot."

"Aww, just like Mido-chan," Toga crooned with a grin. "Always trying to learn more about Quirks, even old dead people!" She leaned over to ruffle his hair affectionately and Izuku flinched and pulled away, smiling tightly as he tried to fix it.

"I don't see the point," Twice remarked. "They're all dead anyway, right? Not like you'd get anything valuable." Izuku waited for him to continue, but it seemed to be one of the rare times the duplicating villain didn't contradict himself, which. He didn't know if that was a good or bad thing, or just part of his usual eccentricities.

"Tch, as long as it's not All Might," Shigaraki grumbled under his breath, scowling lightly as he grabbed the glass Kurogiri just filled for him. Once again Izuku had to restrain the instinctive wince at the obvious displeasure in his expression; it was hard to act "natural" around the man when his mere presence gave him distinct flashbacks to a myriad of horrible situations. He really didn't want to anger Shigaraki.

"There are leftovers in the private kitchen," Kurogiri offered. "You can help yourself to them."

"Thanks, Kurogiri," he replied with a feeble smile as he circled the counter to the back door, and as an afterthought added, "Enjoy Toga's... uh, mystery meal."

His comment elicited a delight cackle from the girl in question, while several of the other villains groaned lowly. Izuku quickly scurried through the door before the fallout could begin, sighing quietly as he walked down the hallways.

Somehow, Izuku had reached his fourth day surrounded by enemies in an alternate universe without freaking out or raising suspicion. In this world the League had a different roster than the one he knew. Dabi seemed to be absent, as was Spinner, but their spaces had been more than compensated by a host of new faces like Seiko or Aiko, who... he still hadn't actually met yet—or even found in his journals—but her name came up pretty often in conversation. If it weren't for the journals and analysis books, he wouldn't have been able to identify most of these people.

Disconcertingly enough though, a few of them he did recognize... as sidekicks and more recently debuted Heroes from his own world.

In any event, fortunately Izuku didn't have to interact with them directly too often. Much of his days were spent in the bar, reading his oldest journals or playing a portable game console Shigaraki gave him while the Villains went about their business. Few of them bothered him directly besides Shigaraki and Kurogiri, instead treating him more like part of the scenery rather than a living person as they discussed their plans.

It almost felt like a dream, surreal and impossible in so many ways. He still couldn't wrap his mind around the genuine affection Shigaraki showed him. It was subtle, hidden beneath a lot of deadpan and game analogies, but it was there. It was clear in how relaxed and casual he acted with Izuku, casually offering permission to play his game consoles—which he'd quickly realized were normally off-limits to other people—and the occasional teasing comment about his journals.

The more time Izuku spent with him, the more confused he got by their relationship. Despite his original doubts, it seemed he really wasn't a tool to Shigaraki by any means. He would shoo Izuku away if "business talk" came up in the bar, and would steer attention away if people focused on him too much. The man didn't even care about his Quirk Analysis notes and how it could be used to work against Heroes, though he obviously knew about them based on his snide remarks about Izuku's continued hero worship habits.

It honestly baffled Izuku. He couldn't figure out why Shigaraki cared about him so much, other than just long-term familiarity. But what would even spawn such a relationship in the first place was beyond him. All he had was a vague hint in the letter that he'd been picked up by the Alliance for a reason, but he had no idea what said reason could be—and at this point, he wasn't sure if he wanted to know anymore.

Just thinking about it made him feel frustrated, biting his lip and shaking his head as he shoved it away. Right now he had better things to do. He hadn't lied about the old interviews with Silver Age Heroes, but he'd already set it to record to watch later. Instead, when he reached a split in the hall he turned down the opposite one from his room. After three days he'd gotten a good idea of the building's layout, and it took him little time to reach Room 7.

Taking a deep breath, he braced himself and knocked on the door, the metal reverberating under his fist before he slid the small slat open just an inch. "Kacchan, it's me," he called. "Can I come in?"

There was a moment of silence, and then, "Just fucking open it, Deku. Not like I can stop you." Izuku's stomach both twisted and settled at the response, and he braced himself before opening the door, finding Bakugou glowering at him from the bed.

Somehow, this was the most nerve-wracking part of his new routine. Seeing his old childhood friend filled him with a rush of much-needed familiarity and security, even his bitter scowl feeling normal, but the tension in the room was much worse than it had ever been in his world. He smiled feebly at Bakugou nonetheless, letting the door close behind him as he pulled his phone from his pocket.

"I found some more cool videos online," he said. "Do you want to watch one?" Bakugou scoffed and glanced away, his gaze dark and irritable.

"Whatever," he grumbled. "Not like I have anything better to do in this fucking shithole." The words had a little less heat to them than he usually heard from the blond, making Izuku's heart sink just a little, but at the same time it was so like him that it was reassuring. Izuku took the invitation to scurry over and sit on the cot next to him, holding the phone in his lap so they could both see.

It was a bit uncomfortable and endlessly awkward to sit with Bakugou when the other boy clearly detested him so much, but it's not like that was anything new. It was sort of like back in middle school, if you took away the grudging tolerance on Bakugou's end and the bulky handcuffs covering his hands to block him from using his Quirk. It sucked, but it wasn't completely unfamiliar territory.

Still, Izuku hoped neither of them would have to put up with this much longer. For now he just queued up the video, hoping that maybe he could get his old friend to speak a little more today compared to yesterday. He wouldn't be able to devise a solid plan of action just yet—he had no where near enough information to figure out anything—but he figured getting Bakugou to agree to become his "bodyguard" would be a good first step.

Bzz. Bzz.

Shouto stared down at the phone as it vibrated in his palm, the screen lit up with only the letter "D" for a name. Mouth thinning, he waited for it to stop buzzing before hitting the power button, dimming the screen and slipping it into his jacket's pocket as he stepped out of the alley. He breathed out a quiet sigh as he joined the crowds walking down the sidewalk, hands stuffed in his pockets and his head held low.

Act natural, he silently commanded himself as he fell into step with the other pedestrians. He had his hood up and a scarf pulled over his face, the normally shady look thankfully going unquestioned thanks to the mid-November chill. Less easy to explain was his eye patch, used to cover the eye with the scar, but hopefully if he kept his head down no one would really notice. If someone questioned him about it or—worse yet—recognized him, he wasn't sure what he'd do.

In the days since waking up in an abandoned building with Dabi of all people, he had slowly come to the realization that this world didn't fit with the one he knew. The first sign had been when he saw a group of police officers use their Quirks to apprehend a purse thief. He'd been stunned by the blatant abuse of their Quirks despite clearly not being Pro Heroes, but no one else even batted an eye.

From there, Shouto had noted a lot of other inconsistencies that all led to one conclusion: this world wasn't his.

Coming to grips with that fact had been difficult. As the son of Endeavor, he had been taught to prepare for all sorts of situations and disasters, but he'd still never accounted for something like this. His best guess was that he somehow ended up in an alternate universe, or had been trapped in an illusion of some sort. Whatever happened, the main point was that everything was different.

He'd given up on going to heroes for help a while back. How could he even begin to explain his problem when he didn't even know what was going on? It wasn't like he'd be able to find one anyway. Shouto still hadn't really figured out what city he was in, but he'd quickly determined that it had no public hero agency. When he'd tried asking people about one he'd only received blank looks or queries about if he felt alright.

As best as he could gather, public hero agencies simply didn't exist the way he was used to, even though he still saw heroes on TVs in store windows. Yet another sign something was wrong with this world.

Unfortunately, Shouto didn't have many options to find out what else might be different though. It wasn't like he could just go on his computer or turn on the news. Right now he was essentially homeless, spending his nights sleeping in abandoned buildings or alleyways, and his days just wandering the streets. Going back to his house never even crossed his mind. His father could be stubborn at the best of times, and he didn't want to deal with his reaction to Shouto showing up with no knowledge of, well, anything.

As it stood, his only window into this world was the cell phone, which he still hadn't unlocked yet. Usually he kept it off to conserve the battery since he didn't exactly have regular access to an outlet for the charger, but whenever he did turn it on he'd receive at least one or two calls from "D" each hour. It didn't take much thought to figure out who "D" was. Why Dabi kept calling him, Shouto had no idea, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

In any event, he needed to do some research. He'd spent the past three days scrounging up money from wherever he could—searching for leftover change in vending machines, offering to help people carry stuff to their cars and houses, even asking passing pedestrians for any spare yen. He'd finally saved up about two thousand yen, which should be enough to rent a spot in an internet café for a few hours. He intended to use every minute of that time to learn as much information as possible.

As he walked down a busy street lined with stores towards the nearest one he could remember, a TV caught his eye and he paused upon noticing it displaying the weather forecast. He couldn't hear the audio, but he grimaced as he saw a dark cloud with lightning appear in the background below a moon icon. Thunderstorms had to be the worst type of weather he could encounter right now, and it looked like they'd be in for a nasty one that night.

Mulling over his options, he turned around and began walking the other direction. It was barely noon and the sky was clear, so he might as well wait until evening so he could rent the booth and stay dry. Until then, he'd just try to gather more money in hopes he could find enough to sleep there. He smirked as he imagined how his father would react to him, the prodigal son, sleeping in an internet café like a homeless runaway.

That's probably what's actually happening though, he mused to himself. Shouto suspected he'd had a reason for dying his hair black and carrying around all the components for a quick disguise.

His musings soon ended when someone suddenly shouted something and people immediately surged past him, their voices blurring together as they chattered excitedly. "Sorry!" a girl called as she bumped his shoulder, not bothering to stop as she kept running. Twisting to glance over his shoulder, he noticed a small crowd had gathered beneath a rather large monitor mounted outside a bar, the screen showing what looked to be an ordinary office building with "BREAKING" displayed beneath it. Shouto frowned, confused by the scene and the excitement in the small group.

Then one of the windows near the top flew open and a figure in a tailored black suit flew out, leaping through the sky as if skipping.

Several of the girls in the crowd shrieked as the camera panned over to the man as he made his escape, making Shouto wince and quickly cover his ears. Even so he could clearly hear their cries of "GENTLE!" and "SO COOL!" He grimaced as the shrieks continued, trying to ignore them as he squinted up at the monitor. A hero he didn't recognize appeared on screen trying to chase the man, awkwardly bouncing through the air along the path the villain had run.

But at one point the hero's foot plummeted and he fell, making Shouto suck in a sharp breath and the crowd go silent as the camera followed his descent. From that height the fall would almost certainly be fatal. Before he could fall very far though a surge of black energy suddenly swooped beneath him to break his descent, making Shouto freeze and the girls shriek somehow even louder.

A cloaked figure swung into the camera's line of sight, one gloved hand clutching a rope as the dark energy rippled from beneath the cloak's hem. The newcomer used their free hand to grab the hero's wrist, jerking him out of the darkness and tossing him to the ground. Still made for a painful landing, but at least the fall was considerably shorter than before.

The shadows withdrew into the cloak as the rope swiftly jerked upwards, yanking the newcomer towards the original suited man. The camera moved to show the rope had come from a device on his wrist, using his free hand to tug on the cable to pull it back. Once the cloaked figure got close enough he grabbed them and pulled them to his side, retrieving the other end of the rope and holding it close. The pair turned and fled together, leaping away through the air.

As they disappeared into the distance the camera shifted to show a news reporter, their voice inaudible over the cheering girls in the crowd. It hardly mattered though, Shouto's mind focused on the last particular figure to enter the scene.

That was Dark Shadow.

Tokoyami Fumikage's Quirk was one of the most distinct ones in the class. Even before Shouto had started opening up to his classmates, it had stood out to him as one of the most powerful in 1A. As he stared at the screen the ticker bar changed to show "GENTLE CRIMINAL AND PHANTOM SHADOW STRIKE AGAIN!" Phantom Shadow? It seemed melodramatic enough for Tokoyami's tastes.

Either way, he had a name—two names, now: Gentle Criminal and Phantom Shadow.

As Shouto stared at the screen he felt the phone suddenly buzz, vibrating softly with an incoming call. His fists clenched at his sides, turning away from the monitor and striding down the street with a renewed sense of purpose.

So minor spoilers for the manga, there's a villain named Gentle Criminal who appears after the Overhaul arc. I won't give many major spoilers on him and how his arc goes (chances are this fic won't even make it to his first in-person appearance before he debuts in the anime). All you need to know for now is that he likes to record and post videos of his crimes exposing "injustices" in the world. Although in this world, he's a bit more famous and extravagant with his targets...

Question: now that you've seen Tokoyami, where do you guys think the other members of Class 1-A are?