A Hero Out of Time
(Inspired by Doctor Who)
Ever since she was young, Ochako has always been... different.
Even in her early years, Ochako showed a remarkable intelligence. She was a massive history buff and a wiz at technology and electronics, designing and creating all sorts of strange gadgets that only she seemed to understand, all the while passing every test that she has been given to the highest of marks, even attaching extra credit assignments on history papers and correcting them on any mistakes that they made on pre-quirk history.
She also happens to be, according to those around her, absolutely bonkers. She has a lot of strange mental processes and has a strange disconnect from others. She acts like both an immature child and a grown adult at the same time, like a kid in a sweet shop but with the mental faculties of a grown-up genius.
Stranger still, and more worryingly, is her tendency to disappear for long periods of time, and her odd fascination with an old blue box...
By the time she enters U.A., Ochako has already gained a bit of a reputation amongst her local rural community as an oddball. A girl that, while being an extremely helpful mechanic and tinkerer amongst other things, has picked up a lot of peculiar habits and processes, particularly her penchant for dressing in old English dresses and hats. In fact, her entrance into U.A.'s entrance exam had her wearing an old pink and blue English dress with a feather hat on top and sprouting a bunch of babble to Izuku when she first meets him, all before completing the written exam with top marks and then shutting down all the robots in the entrance exam with that strange wand device of hers.
Yep, you heard that right. All of them. Suffice to say, the U.A. judges weren't too happy with her on that front.
But, Ochako gets into U.A.'s hero course anyway, and Class 1-A is immediately bemused by the girl's eccentricities, such as her habit of talking about history and gadgets and her constant need to wear a top hat over her uniform. They are even more bemused when her hero outfit turns out to simply be long coat and hat combo alongside her astronaut inspirations.
Suffice to say, Aizawa can't stand her peppy and eccentric attitude, especially when she seems to find enjoyment from vexing him due to how many ways she can bend the school's rules without breaking them. The rest of her classmates, meanwhile, are both drawn to her because of her strange charisma and also put off by her strange habits and penchant for referring to her closest friends in U.A. as her companions.
During the first hero exercise, Ochako choses not to use her quirk, and instead outthinks her opponents by using her sonic to set off the emergency sprinklers, soaking Bakugo in water and diluting his sweat, therefore rendering his explosion quirk useless. After that, she then sets off the fire alarm, messing with Iida as he is left confused as to either carry on with the exercise or escape from the building as are the fire drill rules, allowing Izuku to sneak past him and claim the bomb, all the while Ochako distracted Bakugo with her endless babbling and sarcastic mockery of him.
Suffice to say, All Might is impressed at how Ochako was able to formulate a plan to defeat the villain team without a single punch being thrown, but Aizawa, despite admiring the creativity, continues to be vexed by her attitude, thinking her as a useless jokester who's not taking the hero course seriously, or worse, a slacker who thinks she can just coast by on words alone.
But then, the USJ arrives, and so does the League of Villains. However, this time, instead of soundly defeating the League's foot soldiers, the students find themselves being outgunned and outfought by the thugs, forcing them all into a corner, with Shigaraki baying for their blood.
It is then that Ochako flashes her strange wand, and with a whirling groan, the old blue box suddenly materialises into existence besides them. Ochako orders everyone into the box, and despite Class 1-A's incredulous reactions, with some haranguing and finagling, along with a few snarky barbs at Bakugo's expense, Ochako is able to get them all into the box...
A box that, as the rest of Class 1-A finds out, is bigger on the inside. Then, with a few shifts on the central console, a shake of the box that is somehow bigger on the inside, and a long groaning noise from the centre of the impossible room, Ochako, to the protests of her classmates, throws open the doors...
And steps out into eighteenth century France, much to the shock of everyone else.
Ochako then whirls back to them, a smile on her face. She advises them to try and find some clothes to blend in. Time travel makes looking for the appropriate outfits always so difficult. The TARDIS can show them where the wardrobe is.
Mina promptly vomits onto the floor.
A few hours later, having found the right clothes to fit in, Ochako leads the class to a nearby, where they gather and begin to talk. When are they now? France. When are they? Eighteenth century, smells like July 14, 1789. The day of the Fall of the Bastille. Ooh, what a sight! They should go see it while they're there! It's the day that the French Revolution really gets into swing and the peasantry finds out that they really like putting people's heads on pikes. Funny thing about the Fall of the Bastille, a lot of it was motivated by the fact that King Louis XVI had stationed royal troops all around Paris, which itself was a response to the creation of the National Assembly by the working class. It also didn't help that ol' Louis had dismissed popular finance minister Jacques Necker since he'd been trying to give the Assembly concessions as well, so the peasantry figured that the King would try to dismiss the National Assembly altogether. Then again, she wasn't sure if Louis was clever enough to think of that. She'd met the man, and he never quite seemed like the smartest chip on the block. She'd also met Marie-Antoinette as well. Surprisingly nice girl, she was. Never actually said 'Then let them eat cake, in all honesty. That whole rumour was started because of Jeanne De La Motte and a diamond necklace-
The rest of the class stop her. What the hell is going on? How did they travel in time? What the hell was that blue box of hers? How was it bigger on the inside?
Who the hell is she?
Ochako sighs, having been expecting this. Her name is Ochako Uraraka. She was born at the same time as all of them, but she's been travelling in time all her life.
And the thing that they all travelled in... it's called the TARDIS. Time-And-Relative-Dimension(s)-In-Space. It's a Type 40 time machine, and it... doesn't belong to her. Not really. It belongs to a friend who she's trying to find. She's just keeping the old girl warm for them.
The device that she used to call it in. It's called a sonic screwdriver, one that she had to make herself using a combo of human tech and Galifreyan sonic devices. She'd have used some of the stuff that they've been making in I-Island, but all of that junk is primitive compared to Time Lord technology. Then again, most tech in the universe is.
Class 1-A find it hard to believe any of this, and half of them accuse her of lying. The other half are convinced that she's not telling them the whole story, and Ochako admits that. She'd just rather keep that to herself for now, though. Trust is a two-way street after all. The others, still in shock, are incredulous at the thought of trusting this strange, mad woman before them, but Ochako quickly retorts that she did rescue them from the USJ.
The rest of Class 1-A suddenly remember the USJ, and that they left Aizawa and Thirteen there. They need to get back there immediately, but Ochako tells them to calm themselves. They need to stop and think of a plan before they do anything. The rest of the class are shocked by her response, saying that they can't wait, they're in danger at this very moment.
Ochako disagrees. They have a time machine. They literally have all the time in the world.
The rest of the class, soaking in this realisation, are forced to concede to her point, and they decide to go watch the Fall of the Bastille together.
It's a rather sombre affair, the Fall of the Bastille. The class have a long talk about it, and Ochako simply sums it up as the beginning of just another cycle of endless violence, the kind that works like Les Misérables never likes to touch on. Study history, from the past to the future, and you will see the cycles of revolution and violence again and again, from the first days of man to its last. It's a sombre sight to behold.
Still, the things that grow and live in between the cycles are always worth living for, as she sees a woman and her child turn away from the violence. When looking at the garden of life, one has to see the flowers that grow against the mud between them.
Then, as she looks around, she sees someone staring at them.
It's Shigaraki, glaring at them.
Ochako freezes, tells the others that they need to go, and that's when they see Shigaraki as well and panic. Shigaraki unleashes his quirk and sends forth the first shot into the Bastille, whilst the class flee through the Bastille and end up being the ones to open the door for the peasants to attack Governor Bernard-René Jourdan de Launay as they flee.
Finding their way back to the TARDIS and shutting the door on Shigaraki, Ochako quickly messes with the TARDIS controls once more and launches them into another corner of time. Mars, in the distant future when mankind has terraformed the red planet.
Shigaraki follows them there.
The moon, when Apollo 11 firsts lands on Luna.
Shigaraki follows them there.
The Jurassic era.
Shigaraki follows them there.
A trading outpost to a star flung intergalactic empire many galaxies away.
Still, Shigaraki follows them there.
Again and again, wherever they go, Shigaraki keeps pursuing them, becoming more and more intent on killing them with each passing moment.
Then, finally, at the edge of the universe, on the last day before the universe reaches entropy, Class 1-A decides that it is finally time to make a stand against Shigaraki.
So, using Shigaraki's evident immaturity and his violent desire to put an end to their lives, they quickly set a trap for the leader of the League of Villains and encircle him, beating him down (which Ochako's not very keen on, preferring to talk her enemies down rather than punch them) and then surrounding him.
And that is when they notice the strange watch around Shigaraki's wrist, which Ochako recognises as a vortex manipulator. Cheap and nasty time travel, she calls it, before commenting that this kind of technology shouldn't exist in this universe. Only the so-called Ascendant Powers in this universe have discovered the art of time travel, and even then it was into the far future and definitely not something as unrefined as a vortex manipulator. Where the hell did Shigaraki get something like that?
Shigaraki smiles and tells her that an angel got it for him. Ochako seems to freeze for a moment at that, but is interrupted by the other students as they demand to know why Shigaraki was trying to kill them so badly.
Shigaraki just spits at them. They escaped from him and he didn't like them. And Master told him that he could destroy the things he didn't like. That's all the reason that he needs.
In response, the class goes to take the vortex manipulator away from him, but Shigaraki, in an act of spite, uses his quirk on the watch machine, refusing to let them have it-
But the rapid disintegration causes the vortex manipulator to malfunction, and Shigaraki lets out a scream of pain as his form bloats and contorts, suddenly disappearing in a flash of light as his atoms are scattered all across time, delivering onto him a painful death.
And Ochako, saddened to see the needless loss of a life, simply shakes her head and mutters to herself about cheap and nasty time travel.
The rest of the class is horrified by the sight of the death before them, takes her time in taking them back into the TARDIS, all the class sparing some time to watch the universe reach its end before they return to their present time...
All the while unaware that Shigaraki's atoms have been reassembled and dumped back into the bar, the boy coughing and shivering and demanding to know why the hell he's back here and not killing those damned kids. The voice that answers back, All for One, simply tells him that he lost. He died, and has just been reassembled. He asks as to where the vortex manipulator is, and Shigaraki simply says that it broke, to which All for One tells him that if that's the case, then he's not getting another one anytime soon.
But Shigaraki isn't cut up by the news. Not entirely. He simply smiles and tells All for One that there are so many things out there in the universe. So many people, so many societies, all beyond Earth, all scattered across time and space.
And all of them for him to destroy.
All for One laughs, encourages Shigaraki to nurture that hatred of his and his desire for destruction, and recalls Kurogiri back to their base of operations. The USJ is to be considered a failure, but they can still view the progress of the Nomu from there.
At the USJ, the villain thugs are left in confusion as to the disappearance of Shigaraki and Kurogiri, and the Nomu is left to mindlessly wander about and punt aside anything that it sees, mostly just villains, due to it lacking any orders. Aizawa and Thirteen have been left alone and surrounded, but it is then that All Might arrives after a long time due to dealing with so many other villains around Musufatu and also because of the lack of communications coming out of the USJ. He handily defeats all the villains and brings down the Nomu, rescuing Aizawa and Thirteen from the villains surrounding them. However, when they realise that the students are all missing, that is when they begin to panic...
Until the TARDIS materialises before them, and all of Class 1-A stepping out, still in their eighteenth century French outfits, with Ochako apologising for their tardiness. They got a bit side-tracked.
At the villain's bar, All for One cuts the link that he had with the Nomu, and steps out of the shadows, somehow having been returned to full health. Though he is displeased at the thought of having lost the Nomu, he is still pleased with the results of the USJ and what they have learnt, not just on how to improve the Nomu in the future, but of what to expect from their enemies. Particularly the children of U.A..
Shigaraki scoffs. He doesn't like them, and he wants to destroy them, and All for One remarks that he will soon enough, but he needs to learn not to underestimate them. Shigaraki comments that they got lucky, but All for One makes clear that, lucky or not, he underestimated them and they killed him. Without their benefactor, he would be very much dead and, most importantly, useless to him.
And now, thanks to Shigaraki's actions, they have lost a precious power that their enemy now has full possession over: access to time travel.
And All for One wants that power.
Shigaraki is soured, but All for One tells him to learn from his mistakes and grow. He will get his chance to destroy as much as he likes when the time comes. Shigaraki is bitter at this notion, but resolves to learn anyway.
All for One leaves, and is consulted by his benefactor, the one who returned his face and body back to full health. His benefactor tells him to practice what he preaches, and All for One scoffs. He has never been defeated before, and he won't be defeated by a bunch of children, access to time travel or not.
His benefactor reminds him of the state that he found him in though, and how it had been through his good graces to save him from his bloodied plight. All for One is forced to relent, and ensures his benefactor that he will not make the same mistake twice. He then asks the angel what he is supposed to do now.
The Trickster simply smiles and tells him to go cause chaos, as is his purpose.
Later that day, the students leave U.A., having been let go by the teachers and police and carefully avoiding revealing the truth of the TARDIS and their recent misadventure across time to them, despite the teacher's clear disbelief.
Soon, they all end up following Ochako to an old scrapyard near one of her family's construction projects, where she'd stashed the TARDIS for safekeeping. There, Ochako invites them in, and finally begin to tell them the full truth.
Her name is Ochako Uraraka. That much about her is true. But she's... not from around her. Her mind isn't, but her body is.
In another place, a parallel world far away from here, is a universe where quirks do not exist. Everyone is quirkless, but there are other wonders to the world. Monsters, aliens, distant planets and civilisations all across time and space.
And it is in this universe that she was born and saw them all.
In this parallel universe, Ochako met a time-travelling alien known only as the Doctor, her best friend. He invited her to see the universe and she did. They explored the stars and went to every single corner of time and space itself, seeing sights that defy the imagination and fighting evils that border on the unfathomable.
She stayed with him for all her life, even up to her final years as an aging, ancient old woman...
But then, on her final day of life, something happened. The TARDIS was sent through a crack in the fabric of the universe, and her physical body was destroyed whilst her mind was sent flying off into the universe before landing in her alternative universe counterpart when she was being born.
This body that she is inhabiting is this universe's counterpart of herself, but her mind belongs to the parallel universe where she came from. The TARDIS, meanwhile, landed here, and it had taken her a long time to find it.
The Doctor, however, was not with it.
He was missing.
And that's why she's here, and talking to them. Her best friend, her impossible friend, is missing, lost across time and space, and she's been trying to find him ever since.
(But that's not the whole story. There's more that Ochako's not telling them, but she's not going to be revealing that anytime soon.)
But now things are even worse than she had imagined. If Shigaraki got his hands on a vortex manipulator, then that means that the crack in the fabric of reality that she'd arrived through is still there, and things are slipping through. Who knows what is coming through the hole in reality into this universe, or what is leaving this universe for the next as well.
And if things are slipping through realities and into this universe, then that means that all life in this reality is in danger. There are things out there in her home universe, alien empires and eldritch abominations and beings that command the powers of the gods themselves, that would fall upon this universe like predators looking for a feast, and they need to be confronted and defeated.
But mostly, she asks them to come with her, to be her companions and join her, in the TARDIS, on her quest.
"Where would we be going?"
Ochako smiles.
"Anywhere and anywhen."
(But elsewhere, a lone child stumbles through the streets, a bloody hole in her chest.
The child stumbles into an alleyway, falls, and dies...
And then a bright golden light erupts from her, and she regenerates into a young girl with pale off-white hair, ruby red eyes, and a small horn on her head.)
And that is when we begin to get into the meat of the story, as Ochako and Class 1-A take off in the TARDIS to go explore the universe, seek out threats to battle again, and to find out what this new universe has to offer on her journey to find her long lost friend.
During their adventures and misadventures, they find themselves going from world to world, time to time, and unravelling a great mystery in preparation to a great threat, all in a format similar to Doctor Who's regular episodic scheduling:
They stop a plot by Nazi agents to destroy 1940s London in a pure historical adventure.
They take part in the Sports Festival, only for the stadium and everyone in it to be stolen/kidnapped and forced to fight in a more lethal tournament with alien champions all for the entertainment of a war god.
They battle against Kyudai Garaki as he tries to create an army of Cyber-Nomu and quirk-empowered Cybermen.
They take part in an intergalactic space race, with the prize being Earth itself. Kendo ends up winning it for them with a superpowered motorcycle.
They defeat an alien invasion with the power of love and rubber ducks.
They team up with the talking Penguin detective Frobisher in investigating the murder of an ancient god (Frobisher the talking Penguin detective is a real character, by the way. Look him up.
It's Doctor Who. Weirder stuff has happened.)
They attend the wedding of a human woman to a sentient swarm of bumblebees.
They find and rescue Eri from Overhaul, discovering her powers of regeneration and how this impossible child is somehow a Time Lord.
And they have their first encounter with the Trickster, who cryptically warns them of That Which Is Coming, an existence so evil that not even the Trickster would dare try to confront it.
But it's not just the whole class. A lot of Ochako's companions, that being her classmates, end up going on their own adventures as well.
Aoyama gets to attend the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
Izuku meets the first hero of his world and teams up with him to stop an incursion from a family of shapeshifting alien criminals.
Aizawa ends up hijacking the TARDIS to save Oboro from death, creating a time paradox and allowing the Reapers to come in and start eating everyone and everything relating to the paradox. It is the first time that Ochako actually kicks someone out of the TARDIS, and at the end of it, Aizawa refuses to learn his lesson.
Momo visits and alien planet and ends up using her quirk to give birth to an entire species (again, it's Doctor Who. Weirder stuff has happened).
Iida uses a time paradox to defeat the Eleven-Day Empire.
Jirou teams up with Present Mic, Pop-Step, and the FeatherHATs to defeat Maestro, the God of Music, with the power of Christmas carols in the obligatory holiday special.
Ochako has to work with Present Mic and Midnight to stop Aizawa from continuously pulling Oboros from parallel universes into their world before feeding the ones that he doesn't want as bodies for the Eternals to grant them the power of imagination.
Mina becomes the queen of an entire alien empire.
Kaminari ends up dating a vast eldritch abomination.
Ochako realises that the consciousness of the original Ochako of this universe is still lingering within their body, and uses cloning technology that she, Bakugo, and Kirishima pinch from a Sontaran invasion fleet (after they blow it up) to give the original consciousness a new body and a new chance at life. The two end up dating Izuku at the same time. Izuku is perfectly fine with it.
Tsuyu is forced to save the world from the Weeping Angels all on her own.
And while this is going on, Ochako and her companions keep encountering and battling against the Trickster and the League of Villains, defeating their plans everywhere they go as All for One seeks to master the ability to travel in time, and the Trickster wishes for him to succeed so that he can shred the timelines to suit his own needs.
All the while, That Which Is Coming lurks in the shadows, waiting, and preparing...
The Dalek Time Controller, having fallen through the crack in the fabric of time after following the Doctor and the TARDIS through, has seen this undefended universe, and is now building up an army of human-made Daleks, all with quirks, to soon take over both this universe, and the next, until the entire multiverse bends to the Daleks.
A lot of crossover fics such as this one tend to have either the main characters from the other property or Izuku himself becoming the main character, and I thought that was a bit boring. Not only that, but I've also always been a bit hecked off at how the main narrative of MHA tends to neglect its female characters, such as Ochako and Momo, in favour of its male characters.
So, I decided that in this character, Ochako is not just going to be the companion of the Doctor, but also the main character herself. Because why the hell not, that makes for a change of things, doesn't it?
And also the Daleks are the main villains of this fic. Because my favourite Doctor Who monster is the Dalek and whilst Daleks are already bad enough, the thought of an entire army of Daleks, each one armed with a superpower, fucking terrifies me.