Even with taking Lemillion out of commission for today, I was still dodging heroes left and right, knocking them around before making my escape. How was I a bigger priority than the League of Villains or the gangs around cities? I was the guy who was going around and taking down villains, taking dangerous players and quirks off the board.
Well, it didn't bother me. Fighting against heroes just made me a better crime fighter. Besides, not every hero fought. Some slipped me information they picked up about the League.
Still, though, I couldn't complain too much. Patrolling while watching my loved ones with Search was starting to be all I did in my waking hours.
"Oh? That's interesting." I muttered, watching as the stars on the board were suddenly moving, getting closer to me. This was either going to be a really bad day or a really good one.
"I can see you! I know some of you can hear me!" I yelled as I floated up, holding out my hands and waiting, danger sense warning me in time to use telekinesis to make a wall, blocking the explosion with a smile.
"Damn, that's impressive, Kacchan. You've really grown as a hero. But, I've grown, too." I called before a capture scarf grabbed my arm and neck, pulling me unexpectedly down to the ground.
"Come on! See it from my perspective! I'm working to stop the League! I'm trying to save everyone! Why can't you just let me save you!?" I screamed, managing to catch myself and pull the scarf, nobody attached to it, before the scarf melted, disappearing into nothingness.
"What the hell?" I mumbled before I felt a pain like fire in my skull, dropping me to my knees, unable to even scream as the pain grew with every passing second.
Looking up, I saw fog rolling in, and for all my power, my willpower, my resolve, I was afraid. Whoever had decided to step into the ring, they couldn't be a hero. What hero did stuff like this?
"I-I give up, please!" I begged, pure terror filling my body as some unseen enemy began to whistle, footsteps approaching.
"See, I like the smart Midoriyas. The ones who know when they're beaten and don't fight back anymore." Someone spoke as I did something drastic. Putting my hand in the air, I focused all my power into fireworks, sending up a beacon. I could only pray someone came to help me now.
"Ah, I guess you're not one of the smart ones. That's fine, I'm just going make your death a quick and painless one. I'm a merciful God." The stranger spoke as I got a look at them. His eyes and hair changed colors, and his facial features kept changing, but his voice was the same. It was the same one I'd heard before, when my counterpart visited briefly.
"Are you one of the smart Midoriyas?" I joked, getting kicked right into a wall and through it, finding myself in a supermarket, a crack in my ribs worrying me. Oh, God, it hurt to breathe. I couldn't move. I didn't want to die.
"I am the ultimate. A God among gods. You are just a cheap knockoff." He told me, walking in and pulling out a sword from seemingly nowhere, swinging it at my neck as I closed my eyes.
When I opened them, I wasn't in the supermarket anymore. Was this hell? Heaven? No way I'd been that lucky to make it to heaven, right?
"Izuku Midoriya of Earth 1381-44 you have been chosen for a higher purpose. As such, you have been spared a death at the hands of your counterpart." A man with a long braided beard spoke, green hair and eyes that looked back at me.
"Who are you!? Who was that!?" I asked, trying to sit up, but my ribs were most definitely broken.
"Calm yourself. The Midoriya you met is a destroyer, determined to kill and absorb the powers of every version of yourselves in the multiverse. You have been chosen to fight against him and prevent the destruction of the Deku-verse." The old man spoke, calm and even as he looked at me.
"So that's it, we are calling it the Deku-verse? Jeez, we shouldn't have let Spider-Deku name us." A gruff voice called, a version of me smoking a cigar walking over with hair that was styled up with two spikes in the back that looked like horns. Green hair. And eyes. My face.
"This is real? That guy, he's real, and you want me to help fight against him?" I asked as I slowly sat up, leaning on the side of the bed as my broken ribs sent pain through me.
"Allow me." The older man told me, the pain suddenly gone, the fatigue I'd been growing over the last few weeks gone. I was up to full capacity now, standing and looking at them.
"I couldn't win against him. In a matter of seconds, he had me begging for mercy. What good am I against someone like that?" I asked them, and the other me laughed heartily.
"None of us would last against him. That's why we gotta fight together. Otherwise, all the Midoriya in the multiverse, every hero who calls themselves Deku, every version of us, they all die." The other me explained, and I wanted to run away. I was scared. I couldn't even find villains in my world. How could I beat someone much more powerful than me?
"I'm in. If I back down now, knowing others are suffering, instead of enduring the pain for them, I can't call myself Atlas." I told them, the other me waving so I'd follow.
"Good to know. I'm Clawstrike. It's easier to go by hero names here since most of us are Izuku Midoriya. Not all, though. There's some Izumi Midoriyas, a couple of Mina Ashidos, and plenty of sentient inanimate objects who either came to life one day and started fighting crime or were born that way." Clawstrike explained, looking beyond me for a second. "I know, the exposition sucks, but not everyone knows who I am or what we do, so suck it up."
I was confused. That was just plain weird. Who had he been talking to?
"Oh, poor thing. I've been here long enough to know there are powerful beings out there, watching us, reading us, playing games as us. We're fiction to them, but to us, they might as well be omnipotent God's. Speaking of watching, the old man who looks like us? He's part of an ancient race who watches the cosmos but never intervenes. He's been assigned to watch over every Izuku Midoriya in existence, but when we began to disappear, he saved me from death and had me pick other versions of myself to help save the day. You're one of the last ones i picked. There's still one more I haven't gotten to yet, but we're working on it." He told me, never taking a breath or looking back at me. It was scary how much he knew for someone who kept getting cigar ashes on his clothes.
"Hey, who's the new recruit?" A version of me asked, wearing green and black spandex suit that had a web pattern and white spider symbol on the chest, a red belt finishing off the suit.
"Spider-Deku, this is Atlas. Atlas, this is Spider-Deku. I'd give you both more time to get to know one another, but I'm running late. I'm going to physically visit Earth 0-1381, and I'm taking Atlas with me." Clawstrike told me, never stopping, leaving Spider-Deku and I to shrug, wave to one another, and continue on our way.
"Hey, wait! Why do you need me to go with you?" I asked, and he smiled and put a finger to his lips before pointing to an area with a circle on the floor.
"Because I can't convince this Midoriya to come with me by myself, and I need help. Also, I take every new recruit when I visit a different universe. It helps get them used to the process." He explained, typing into a strange computer before standing on the circle and waving me over.
"Come on, come on, we haven't got all day." He told me, and I didn't object. Danger sense wasn't going off, so I wasn't worried.
"Watcher, hit the switch!" He yelled in my ear, and the old man appeared, pushing a button, before time and space meant nothing, and every sensation ran wild at once, before stopping as suddenly as it started, Clawstrike and I standing in an alley.
"Hold up, we need to wait a moment. Multiversal travel isn't always precise, and we've shown up a little earlier than we should have." He told me, watching down below as a man in a plague doctor mask ran down the alley, stopping at the open end of it and saying something I couldn't hear.
But I could hear Clawstrike growling under his breath, waiting until after the man left, this time with a girl in his arms, before we dropped down in the alley, heading towards where the masked man and the girl had come from.
"Izuku Midoriya? My name is Izuku Midoriya, and this is my partner, Izuku Midoriya. We're from time patrol, here to arrest you for your crimes against the timelines." He told our counterpart, popping out metal claws from his knuckles and looking like he was ready for a fight.
This wasn't what I expected, I wasn't prepared for a fight with anyone, pinching my nose and muttering under my breath.
"Oh god, what have I gotten myself into?"
(Sorry for the short chapter, I'm working towards an ultimate Deku-verse crossover story, so the next few uploads are gonna be rapid fire.)