Shattered Fate

by CaedesPlerique

A world so focused on heroes has lost its way. As the beginning steps of the critical events to the future of their world start to occur, they get some unexpected help. Can these new arrivals save their world from themselves? (MHA/Spider-man/Naruto/Ranma)

3. Chapter 3 - Interrogation

Chapter 3 - Interrogation

Shinya was worried as he sat outside the spider hero's room. He had shut down after his freakout over something. Some revelation about his situation that he hadn't shared. He hadn't even gotten his name or his hero name; that would hopefully make things easier. The case was too puzzling; they made no sense on their own. And too many of those pieces were worrisome.

First was his suit, just because of the implications of what it could mean. Shinya hadn't even gotten close to asking anything about that, so he was still left in the dark. But because of his suit, he was limited on whom he could contact. Functional nano-machines were a terrible– horrifying weapon in the wrong hands. That meant only a limited number of people could know. As far as Shinya knew, only himself, Detective Tanaka, the engineers, and Dr. Shields were mindful of what they might be. It didn't mean others couldn't piece it together, so they had to act fast.

Then there was the fact that the hero was too young to be an adult. His limited communication made it difficult to tell, but the more they conversed, the more it solidified in his mind. The chances of him being licensed were dwindling, making the boy's actions not something he could publicly praise as the young hero deserved. Shinya had yet to even get to thank him for his help. The conversation had quickly been derailed.

While being an American was not pertinent, other than dealing with his license, the additional information he learned was currently making him try to work out scenarios in his head. He had talked about an unknown hero and a hero team called the Avengers as if they were people he should know.

From how the hero described it, he had just popped up in their city; thus, he was a displaced American citizen. Easy enough to deal with, and warping quirks certainly exist that could cause a situation like that. But his reaction to quirks was the real kicker to his problem.

Shinya hoped it was a translation problem, but his gut told him it wouldn't be that simple. He tried to think of plausible scenarios where, if you took what the boy said at face value could account for it, and there were too many problems sticking out. His brain started going with more… implausible scenarios, but they still had complications.

His thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of Detective Tanaka. {Edgeshot, how's the hero?"}

{"Worrisome,"} Shinya answered, making Hayate raise his eyebrow. Shinya then informed the Detective of what had happened when he conversed with him and shared his thoughts on what was going on.

{"That… is worrisome,"} Hayate remarked, certainly agreeing with the pro-heroes thoughts. {"My initial reaction is to claim he's delusional or lying. I would even suggest getting a doctor here to make a psych evaluation… if it wasn't for his suit."}

{"Yes. Most of the scenarios I've thought of have one glaring problem or another,"} Shinya sighed as he looked downwards. {"The easiest way to resolve this is to ask him more questions. But I am worried it is just going to make it worse."}

Hayate could go for a drink now, but they had work to do. {"At least Dr. Shields should be here soon; I got a call that his plane landed about twenty minutes ago. ETA of ten to fifteen minutes. Hopefully, he can give us a quick enough evaluation, even if the hero doesn't answer any more questions."}

{"Indeed,"} Shinya exited his seat and moved towards the hero's door. {"By the way, how's your English?"}

{"Pretty good,"} Hayate replied as he followed the pro-hero into the room, closing the door behind him. He looked at the other hero as he sat there with his head in his hands.

"Feeling a little better?" Shinya asked, a few feet from the bed.

The hero looked up slightly before his head lowered again. "Kinda."

"Let's get some things out of the way first. We… got derailed from some of what I wanted to talk to you about earlier," Shinya said. "First off, let's do some introductions. My hero name is Edgeshot, while my real name is Kamihara Shinya. Or Shinya Kamihara might be more familiar to you. In Japan, we say our family name first, followed by our personal name."

"Right, I remember reading about that in a world history book about different cultures." The boy was sitting on the bed with his legs crossed and hands in his lap as he spoke to them.

"The man behind me in a trench coat is Detective Tanaka Hayate. He's the police detective in charge of the destruction of that apartment building." Hayate gave a friendly nod and a smile behind him. He had shoulder-length brown hair that was swept to the side. His features were sharp compared to most but weren't too extreme like some quirks would cause.

"Oh, hi. I hope everyone is doing okay from that?" The hero asked.

Hayate spoke up this time, "Mostly. We'll get to that soon; we don't want to get sidetracked again."

"Oh– right! My bad!"

"Anyways, we were hoping you could tell us your name?" Shinya chuckled; the kid was energetic, kind, and polite. If he had or could get a hero license, he would be fun to watch and work with.

"Oh! Umm… I'm… Spider-man," the teenager answered.

They waited a moment, but the teen didn't want to elaborate. "Can you tell us your real name?"

The aptly named 'Spider-man' turned his head to the side while an arm propped it up. He was trying to think of how to answer, so the two let him. "Umm, I'd really rather not. At this moment." He seemed sad and apologetic.

The pro-hero and Detective looked at each other before the Detective asked the question they both had, "Can you tell us why not?"

"Ummm, it's complicated. Really complicated." The hero looked at the two. They were obviously hoping for him to uncomplicate it, at least somewhat. "Let's just say I was bitten in the ass really hard by people knowing my identity recently. And I don't know what my current situation is right now."

That was reasonable enough, though that was obviously a loaded answer. They shared another look, with Hayate indicating with his eyes that Shinya should continue. The pro was really hoping this wasn't going to end up badly.

"How… old are you?"

"Ummm, eighteen?" Spider-man answered.

He certainly didn't sound eighteen, but people's bodies came in all shapes and sizes, so his voice sounding younger was easily believable. They decided to save that for later. "Do you have a pro-hero license?"

"A… what? Pro-hero license? Something from the Sokovia accords?"

"Sokovia?" Hayate asked, clearly another word they weren't familiar with.

"Oh, right, you guys probably don't have that. Then, no, I don't think I have a license– oh crap, am I in trouble?"

"No," Hayate answered quickly, "not at this time, and if I can help it, not ever." Hayate breathed deeply before he looked at Spider-man in the… lenses. "This is one of the other things we wanted to do. We wanted to thank you. We don't have the full evaluation yet, but you saved quite possibly over a hundred lives this morning. Even one more death from that chaban geki would have been bad. A hundred?"

"More? Some people died?" Spider-man seemed to collapse in on himself on hearing it.

"Nothing you could have done. They died before you even got to the building. Only two died at the apartment building and died on impact or falling debris. Some residents are still in critical condition, but last I heard, they are expected to pull through."

"Wait, impact? Was it shot at? Well, the debris scattering inside hinted at it, but I didn't have time to properly evaluate it," the young man seemed to mumble on that last part as he thought it over.

"Yes, it was due to a stray shot from another incident several kilometers away. Edgeshot handled that incident, but he couldn't get away for a time to check on it. I don't want to go over it now; it isn't very relevant to our situation." Spider-man nodded, realizing it needed to be tabled for now.

There was a buzzing noise from the Detective, who took out his smartphone to look at it before putting it away again. "We've got a situation on our hands. Regarding you," Hayate conveyed as he looked at Spider-man in the lenses. "That was a text from an expert we called in. He just arrived at the hospital and will arrive in a few minutes. We'll leave that until he arrives, but your conversation with Edgeshot earlier raised another one."

Shinya picked up the conversation, "What do you call your abilities?"

"Umm… superpowers? At least as a general term." Spider-man answered after a moment's thought.

"How did you… get these powers?"

"It's… complicated and kind of goes with my identity to a degree, so I don't want to give any details. But… it was due to an accident."

"When I talked about quirks, you realized something. What did you realize?"

Spider-man sighed as he looked at his hands, obviously debating what to say. "I… it's complicated and probably unbelievable for you guys."

"Give it a shot," Hayate suggested, "we're pretty open-minded."

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

"Bullshit!"

Ranma shrugged her shoulders. If the jerk didn't want to believe her, that wasn't her problem. She continued on as she pulled a chef knife from the kitchen she was borrowing. She had asked the mayor guy where she could get some food, and he gave her carte blanche to use whatever she wanted. She felt like something other than junk food, so she used one of the local restaurants to make her own. They even prepped several dishes and ingredients, so it simplified it.

Using the knife, her hand blurred as she diced the vegetables razor thin and in less than a second, after adequately rinsing them as her mother had taught her. The big guy who had decided to follow her glared at her as she worked. If he was expecting her to make him something, too, he was sorely mistaken. He hadn't said 'please.'

Ranma would have been using the grill for the fish, but it seemed something was damaged in the fight, so it wasn't working. The stove, at least, was working, so she started cooking the fish and the egg and boiling the vegetables simultaneously. It still took a few minutes since the food had to cook properly, but soon she assembled her food along with a bowl of rice and miso soup that had already been prepared. She was rapidly moving between the tasks, her hands a blur at times.

The food dishes were tossed onto the counter where she was deciding to eat as she took the pans into the back and cleaned them in a few seconds. She got a pair of chopsticks out and ate her breakfast; all the while, the big guy that was on fire glared at her. At least the jerk was letting her eat her food in relative peace. She decided to forgo eating rapidly to extend the tranquility a little longer. Seeing him literally put out steam while she ate was a bonus she wouldn't admit to enjoying.

Once she was finished, she took the plates to the back and washed them before returning to sit on the same stool. "So, what's up?"

"You claim to be a hundred and fifty years in the future, and you ask me, 'What's up?' How about the truth, girl."

"Name's Ranma, by the way," she said as she spun around in her seat. The extra narrowing of the guy's eyes meant success. "And I did tell the truth. Went to bed last night on April 2nd, 1990. Woke up in the forest, tried to figure out where I was, beat the dumbass, then saw the date in the newspaper. No idea yet how it happened, but I'll figure it out and get back." She paused her spinning as she looked thoughtful, "I wonder who might have done it this time? Happy? Most likely. Gos? Is he even still around? Kuno?" She continued listing a few names as she tapped a finger on her chin in thought.

The big guy growled a bit before asking her another question, "Beyond the… date from where you come from, where do you live?"

"Eh? Oh, I live at the Tendo Dojo in Nerima. Well, usually. Sometimes I stay with Mom at our house, but the Tendo Dojo is where you normally find me."

"Why do you live at this Tendo Dojo? Is your family name Tendo?"

"No, I'm Saotome Ranma. We live there because my old man wants me to marry a Tendo. We've lived there a few years now."

The big guy seemed to think for a moment before asking her his next question, which Ranma was perfectly willing to let him do. "Did you see anything unusual about where you were in the forest? Any hints of anyone else being in the area?"

Ranma tilted her head a little as she thought of it. "Well, nothing seemed odd about the area, and I saw no signs of anyone being there."

"Do you know how you got to the forest, then?"

"Oh, sure! I landed there."

"Landed… but you said you woke up in the forest?"

"Yep!"

"Did you fall unconscious when you landed? That wouldn't sync with your earlier claim of not knowing how you got there."

"Eh? Oh, no, I was asleep when I landed."

"Then the landing woke you up."

"Nope!" Ranma was having fun messing with the guy. He seemed to keep making all sorts of silly assumptions while he was literally on fire.

"Then how do you know you landed?" The big guy was developing a tick above his eye as he tried to process her simple story.

"Because of the small groove in the ground I woke up in and the damaged tree. It wasn't a very large beech, only like five meters tall. Went through several of the main branches and damaged the trunk something fierce. I nearly hit a squirrel or something since it was pissed at me and was picking a fight. Woke me up, the little punk."

Ah, yes, that look again. The one of disbelief of telling someone just the tiniest nuggets of her life. Sometimes it was fun, like now, but usually, it was just annoying. Most people didn't seem to realize just how 'air quotes,' crazy life could get, believing everything fit into their narrow understanding of the world. But once they started to experience a fraction of her life, even just witnessing from the sidelines, people tended to get used to what they called insanity. What she found aggravating was that the guy on fire disbelieved her.

And they thought Ryouga popping up out of the ground on a random school day, picking a fight, then asking her to help them with some bizarre scenario was insane. That's a Tuesday. Try random princes from kingdoms no one ever heard of before kidnapping your fiance, you, or both of you, just so he can marry them in some weird custom. Or, as one of the most horrible days of her life, a giant ghost cat wants to marry your Chinese Amazon fiance by trying to trap her as a cat, and you have to go on a date with the cat and kiss it!

Ranma's body shuddered at the memory, causing the fire guy to raise an eyebrow. "What was that about?"

"Just remembering something unpleasant."

"And what was it?"

"I ain't telling," Ranma announced with finality as she crossed her arms. The guy was getting aggravated even further by evidence of him rubbing his forehead.

Ranma decided to do something proactive while he questioned her, so she put her hand on the seat, steadied it, lifted her body to cross her legs, and then twisted on the fulcrum of her shoulder until she was upside down. She spun the seat and then did some one-finger push-ups. The guy eyed her as she performed the task; annoyance, curiosity, and a minimal amount of respect appeared in his eyes.

"What is your quirk?"

"Huh? What do you mean quirk?" She turned her head to watch him as she spun, deciding that she wanted to up the ante and allow her to look at him more appropriately. She applied pressure to the top of the seat so it started to lift off its four solid legs onto two and then one leg. Then with two fingers, she started 'walking' on the rotating seat like it was a log.

"A quirk is the ability you are showing right now."

"How is training a quirk?" She tilted her head in confusion as she swapped hands without missing a beat.

"A quirk is the manifestation of your strength, speed, agility, and balance that you are currently displaying."

"You aren't making any sense, dude! How is training and skill an odd behavior? That is what it means, right?" She put her unused hand to her chin as she tried to think. Her other hand had her fingers start doing a dance number on the seat as it went along. "I think that was what they described the word as in school."

The guy used a full hand to rub his face for a few moments before he looked up with a glare at her. The squeaking of her seat spinning probably wasn't helping.

They were interrupted by a knock on the restaurant's door before it opened to show one of the officers. He did a double take as he looked at her, staring until the big guy coughed into his hand. With the spell broken, the officer reported, "Endeavor-san, we just received a report. The Pussycats are two minutes out."

She winced a fraction at the name, which the big guy seemed to have caught. Great, probably meant she'd have to deal with the little demons soon. And annoying questions that she wasn't going to answer. Nope! No way, no how! Not even if they threatened her with cats!

The big guy turned to the officer, "I'll meet them at the landing pad." He then turned to her, preparing to say something when he had a second thought. "Where did you land in the forest?"

She hummed as she thought of it, tapping her chin while grasping the chair firmly and stopping the spin. "I think it was northwest or west-northwest of here, about two to two and a half kilometers away." She tilted the seat back down and righted her body to be right side up.

"Thank you. Stay here."

"Eh, okay."

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

"You can come in now, Detective," a voice came through the door loud enough for him to hear.

Naomasa sighed as he stopped leaning against the wall, leaving his coat, hat, and gloves on the chair beside him. He nodded to his fellow officers before entering the room. He saw the two doctors sitting in chairs near the bed, their dinner meals on top of one of the tables, and the girl's meal. The girl, Sakura, was sitting up and giving him a bored look.

He would almost prefer her to be scared or startled since that would be easier to deal with. A bored look meant she knew what was coming and wasn't impressed. Considering the possibilities of the girl's origin, that wasn't good. But at least it wasn't anger.

"Hello, I am Detective Tsukauchi Naomasa. I understand your name is Haruno Sakura?"

"Yes."

"I apologize for the usage of the handcuffs, but it was felt due to the nature of the situation that there was a high chance of you attempting to run before we could question you."

"Yes, an exhausted girl in a hospital gown's first instinct will be to run to avoid questioning.." Sakura rolled her eyes at the Detective.

"Exactly." When Sakura looked Naomasa in the eyes, he returned it to show that he knew she was capable of such an action. After holding eye contact for a time, Sakura finally sighed.

"What do you want?"

"To know what you are and where you came from."

"Human."

"You know that is not what I meant."

"Then what do you mean?"

"You are trained in combat to such a degree that you can move at high speed while delivering a hit that can shatter a jaw while at the same time controlling the strength of it so you don't go overboard. With your medical knowledge, you could have chosen less debilitating strikes with your strength to neutralize the criminal. But you also did not go for an immediate kill. This tells us you intended to do exactly what you did to him."

The girl remained silent as the Detective continued. "You are trained in field medicine to a high degree, even with the usage of your quirk. But you have zero records in any government system we have access to, which includes most of the world. That means your training was 'off the books.' Either a medical school not accredited by most of the world or personally trained by someone else."

"Additionally, you appeared out of nowhere, were on high alert, and then confused. You were also injured, acidic burns on your arm being the most obvious, with your clothing showing signs of combat from burns and cuts. Your equipment included various weapons, kunai and shuriken most notably, some scrolls and other equipment for performing surgeries."

Naomasa saw that Ai was worried about what he was saying but did not seem surprised. She had come to similar conclusions, at least.

"All of this, combined with your lack of reaction to my inquiry, means you were trained to deal with interrogation. We have people like that; we call them soldiers. Trained for warfare."

Naomasa waited to see if the girl would give a reaction, but she just continued to look bored.

"Soldiers are not unusual, and sometimes records of them are purged and hidden by their governments or groups. But there is one thing they are not. A child." That actually got a moment of confusion before she schooled her features. That was good.

"Child soldiers have been outlawed in almost every civilization on the planet. That means someone has illegally trained and weaponized you from an early age."

Naomasa sighed as he rubbed his head, relaxing a little from the interrogation. "Look, Haruno-san, our conflict is not with you, but whatever organization or individual turned you into this. I could have played the spy game and come off soft-handed while watching you, inserted tracking bugs into your clothing before returning them to you, or any other ways we would normally treat an unknown soldier or spy."

Sakura raised an eyebrow at that, so Naomasa continued. "I am playing straight with you, revealing my hand because of three things. First, your actions did stop a criminal and saved lives; we are very thankful for that. Second, whoever trained you did not make you a mere cold-blooded killer; otherwise, the criminal would be dead and likely would not have taken action to save so many civilians. Third, your age suggests you were either manipulated or had no choice in what you became."

The minor glare that Naomasa got from her from that last line meant she didn't like the insinuation. He had seen it before, just like most people or groups that came from cults or gangs.

"I need enough for us to evaluate whether we need to take action or not. The ends do not justify the means, Haruno-san. We take that seriously."

Sakura remained silent and continued giving him a level-headed look, obviously not budging. He hoped this wouldn't come to a fight, but her stubbornness and training would result in that outcome.

"Detective?"

Naomasa turned to Ai, "Yes?"

"Can I speak to Sakura-chan alone?"

"You may," Naomasa walked towards the door, holding it open for the other Shuzenji following him out, "I'll be right outside."

"Thank you, Detective."

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

"The multiverse?" That was not what Shinya had been expecting. Though he could have come to that conclusion eventually, it was so outrageously out there that it seemed the least likely explanation. Shinya looked at Hayate, who seemed even more dubious of the possibility. But he knew the Detective well enough that he wouldn't outright dismiss it. They needed more. "Do you have anything to offer that might be more proof?"

Spider-man almost replied instantly before he seemed to think about it further. "Maybe? I'd have to check with Karen if there is anything we could use to help prove it."

"Karen? Who is Karen?" Hayate asked.

"Oh, she's my suit," he said as he tapped on his chest plate.

"You're… suit?"

"Yeah, she runs a lot of functions on my suit for me," Spider-man affirmed.

The pro-hero and Detective looked at each other, trying to figure out how to respond. They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Hayate walked over to it and opened it, showing Doctor David Shields standing outside.

The scientist was taller than most Japanese because he was Caucasian and from America, so his 185 cm was not unusual. He was of average build with unkempt brown hair and a small goatee on his face. He wore a dark blue shirt with a breast pocket, and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His pants were gray-blue jeans and some sneakers. He also sported some glasses.

"Ah, Detective Tanaka, I presume?" David asked before peeking inside and seeing Edgeshot as well. "May I come in?"

"Certainly, Doctor Shields," Hayate said as he stood to the side and waved him in. The Detective closed the door behind him.

After stepping in, David got his first look at the primary reason for his visit and was already impressed. He had worked on and designed hundreds of hero costumes to various degrees in the past, and the one in front of him was one of the best he had ever seen. Aesthetically it was very well designed, but that tended to be subjective. But David was more impressed by the things that were difficult to see.

The lenses, at first, were only slightly impressive, but he caught a glimpse of them refocusing. That indicated they were mechanical like Shinya had suspected, possibly functioning as some form of focus system. That was impressive; machinery that is that small and advanced lends more credence to the claims he had heard.

The other parts were challenging to see, even for him. The slight bulging of the wrists and waist indicates something was beneath them. The wrists he couldn't put an immediate guess to, but maybe were related to the 'webs' that supposedly came out of his wrists. Perhaps a support item that created different uses for them. The belt was also tricky to see but likely stored some helpful stuff. Very tiny stuff, but stuff.

He couldn't determine the material composition, but it was high-end. He could also tell that certain parts of the suit, like around the head, arms, and legs, were very high-quality synthetic cloth. The metal, especially around the torso and leaking to the arms and legs, also looked flexible and robust. Based on Edgeshot's report, which he read as closely as he could on his way here, those were part of the nanite system.

If he needed evidence of someone possibly creating a nano-suit, he was getting enough just from looking at it now. You needed advanced manufacturing capabilities to produce anything as tightly controlled as he saw. Most people would just think it was a skin-tight costume, but David saw it as the technological marvel that it was. This would likely take him weeks to design and a few months to manufacture.

Leaving that for now, David smiled warmly as he addressed the young hero. "Hello, I am Doctor David Shields. I'm a scientist and engineer; Edgeshot-san requested me to evaluate your suit."

"Umm, my suit? Why would you need a scientist to evaluate it?" Spider-man asked, confused about the direction this had taken.

"It's specifically regarding some observations made while you were helping with the evacuation of the apartment building. The reports I was given and some recorded video footage gave us a hint, and I was called in. After reviewing the evidence myself, I agreed with their evaluation," David said before diving right to the heart of the matter. "Specifically, we are concerned about your suit having nano-technology. And the implications of it."

"What? Why would that be a– oh… oh right! You guys don't have nano-tech, do you?" Spider-man asked the pro-hero and Detective. The headshakes confirmed his guess. "If you guys don't have nano-tech… okay, yeah, I can see the concern. I really hope you won't try to take it from me? That won't end well for anyone."

"Do you have some proof that it is nanites?" David asked, getting very fascinated by the conversation. The other things he had just divulged were intriguing and indicated something more than an isolated scientist or engineer way ahead of the curve.

"Umm, yeah, I think we can manage something like that. Hey, Karen? Can you– thanks." As he talked, parts of his costume, specifically the metal parts, started moving across the suit. They traveled down his right arm and settled into his hand to form a small projector, which lit up and displayed a 3D model render of his suit above the hand.

While Shinya and Hayate were surprised to see this, it had nothing compared to David's reaction. His wide eyes and face shifted between absolute wonder and terror. He knew all the implications of what was involved with what the hero had both said and shown in front of him. Nano-technology guided by an A.I. Either one could shift the future of their world in unknowable ways, while together, once it was revealed, would shock the foundations of their world, much like the introduction of quirks had.

It took several seconds for David to find the controls to his mouth again, but when he did, he had to confirm a few things. "This… Karen, I take it she is an A.I. attached to the nanites?"

"Umm, yeah."

"Is she a general or narrow A.I.?"

"Oh, she's a general A.I., specifically a natural language user interface with self-programming capability. She does have some restrictions, though."

"Where did you get that suit and the A.I.?"

"From my mentor, Tony Stark."

"Tony Stark? I've never heard of him," David was confused. He figured he would at least have heard of someone so brilliant to have created nano-technology and a general A.I.

"I'm not surprised you haven't. But on my world, he's the greatest hero that has ever lived." The young man declared, looking and sounding very proud yet saddened.

"Your world?" David asked, now further confused.

"We had just gotten to that part when you arrived, Doctor," Hayate said. David turned back to look at him, wanting him to elaborate further. "He claims that he came from another universe."

"Another… universe?" David asked in amazement, looking between the hero on the bed and the two men.

"He hadn't gotten around to the details about that yet. Hopefully, he can explain it to us now," Shinya replied as they waited.

"It's complicated."

"Complicated how?"

Spider-man sighed as he tried to think of how to explain things. "There's a ton of… baggage that starts from older events that eventually lead up to what happened. Some of this is also why I don't want to take my mask off. And I don't think you'll believe some of it if I tell you."

Shinya sighed, looked around, and then picked up one of the nearby chairs and set it a few feet from the bed, a comfortable distance. Hayate and David did the same thing. "Start from where you think you can at the beginning. I think a more complete and better picture is needed than a quick snapshot. It will help with the context more."

"Ummm, do you want a start from my beginning? Or some others?"

"Let's start with yours. If we need context on some things, you can explain those."

"Okay."

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

Shino looked out at the surrounding forest as the helicopter neared the village. The rest of her teammates sat silently near her; they had been filled in on what she knew so far. Since this was hero work, they wore their costumes.

They all wore a costume that was essentially the same thing but in different colors. They wore a shoulderless, high-colored shirts that looked more like a vest with straps reaching across. The shirt only reached just above their belly buttons. There was a large and fluffy skirt with an inner lining to help keep the skirt fluffed as it was, some heavy shin-length boots rated for any rough terrain, and a layer of fur at the top. Their gloves were oversized and made to look like large paws with nails at the tips that could also act as weapons. On their heads was an exaggerated headset that went around the back and served as a transceiver for radio communication, but it was made to look like they had ears on the top of their heads. To finish their look, they had a cat tail sticking out of their skirts and wore makeup to stylize after cats.

Shino's red and white costume went well with her brown hair that barely went past her ears. Ryuko's was blue and white, but she also wore a visor across her eyes. Tomoko's was yellow and white, while Yawara's was brown and white. Wearing these costumes made them identifiable as the Wild Wild Pussycats, the pre-emptive team that was the experts at dealing with mountain rescue operations.

As Shino looked on, she wasn't sure what to think of the situation. She didn't have enough information on the girl they were interrogating to form a proper opinion. There were dangers and pitfalls to assuming she was a good person just because she interfered with Muscular. Then there were the oddities that Endeavor had commented about what was revealed. She would do the best she could and hoped it would be enough.

As the helicopter crested the hill, she saw the lake and the village's roofs creeping through the trees. "The village is in sight," Shino declared and then saw her most enthusiastic teammate, Tomoko, look out the window to see the village. Then she felt an arm go around her shoulder in a quiet hug from Ryuko while Yawara gave a smile and a big thumbs up. She smiled back in thanks before turning back to the window to see they had arrived.

She saw Endeavor walking towards the docks as their helicopter lowered. The helicopter landed on the part of the dock set aside for them, then the pilot raised a hand and gave them a thumbs up. Shino opened the door, and they all stepped through and walked toward the approaching number two hero.

"Thank you for coming," Endeavor had to shout a little to be heard over the still-spinning blades. "I did a preliminary interview to get a baseline of what we are dealing with."

"What did you find out?" Shino asked.

"She claims to be from a hundred and fifty years in the past and does not appear to know what quirks are. While she didn't outright say it, she claims her abilities stem from training and skill, not a quirk."

That… had not been what she expected to hear. "Do you believe her?"

"At this time, no. She hasn't given me enough to believe her, but I also tried to probe her for lying and was unsuccessful. She appeared unaware of quirks, using the older and less used definitions of personality quirks. That is a detail few would pick up on, and crafting a story like this makes little sense. But it is not outside the bounds of possibility."

"Anything else?"

"She gave her name as Saotome Ranma and had lived with a family named the Tendo's in Nerima for some time due to an arranged marriage. Lived with her father while her mother stayed at her residence. Her sense of shame in her clothing is almost absent. She is currently only wearing a tank top and some boxers, so when she performed some 'exercises,' she nearly exposed herself and didn't appear to notice. In terms of capability, she is swift, precise, and powerful even with her fingers and a sense of balance that few could hope to match. I witnessed those as she performed those exercises."

He seemed to think for a moment before deciding to share any information that could be key to figuring this situation out. "Muscular awoke just as we were going to put the stronger restraints on him. He was willing to fight even when I was standing before him, but the girl popped up, and he became terrified. His type tends to get off on bloodlust, so for him to become terrified of her, I believe she dominated the fight so badly that he knew subconsciously he would have no hope of winning. Be very careful around her."

Yawara nodded, "Understood."

"She gave enough details about how she arrived that I will see if I can confirm it. The more her story checks out, the more likely she may be telling the truth. Any discrepancies can help with uncovering the truth." Endeavor turned to their leader, "Mandalay, use your telepathy to inform me of any important developments. Ragdoll, use your quirk to lock onto her in case she runs. She's in the restaurant at the end of the street." He then walked off a bit before blasting into the air with a trail of fire.

They watched Endeavor fly away before Shino turned to her teammates, "Shall we?" It took them a minute to reach the restaurant before they entered it. They found the girl leaning in to inspect some of the local items with curiosity. They weren't expecting her to do that from four meters in the air, her toes gripping the ceiling slats.

Shino stepped into the room, allowing her teammates to walk in after her. "Excuse me, are you Saotome Ranma?" After a moment, the girl turned in their direction and… flinched? She repeated it as she inspected all four of them; a tick appeared above her eye.

"Yes! What do you want!?" Ranma practically growled at them. Shino was confused; everything she had heard showed no negative emotions toward anyone here. Maybe Endeavor had done something? But he had seemed almost respectful towards the girl.

Shino prepared to reply when she felt a hand on her back. Looking to her left, she saw Tomoko leaning from behind her in her typically eccentric attitude, but then her eyes widened and became very serious. Tomoko stepped around her to stand beside her, not taking her eyes off the girl. She must have seen something with her quirk because not a moment later, she was taking her gloves and helmet off and popped off the cat tail they all wore. Shino looked at her other two teammates for a moment in confusion before they both nodded and proceeded to do the same thing Tomoko had done. Once all four had set their equipment to the side, they turned back to look at the young girl and saw she was much calmer.

Tomoko stepped forward, her smile wide as she spoke, "Hi Ranma! Thank you sooo much! Mandalay was really worried for her cousins there."

Ranma was much calmer now but became confused, "You're… welcome?" She then dropped from the ceiling. Mandalay almost panicked for a moment before the girl twisted in the air to land softly on her feet as if she had only taken a step. "Cousins? Whose Mandalay?"

Shino stepped up next to her teammate, "My hero name is Mandalay. My cousins were the hero team Water Hose."

"Umm, hi? Water Hose? Who are they?"

"They were the injured couple you saved from that villain."

The lightbulb went off in the girl's head as she finally made the connection. "Oh, right! No problem!" Her face adopted a wide smile as her thumbs rested on the waistband of her boxer shorts, and her body language relaxed even further. "Wasn't going to let the dumbass squish them with a boat."

"Boat? What boat?" Ryuko spoke up.

Ranma turned to the window and pointed outside at a boat a little further down the street. "The dumbass had picked it up and threw it at your cousins right after they gave him a nasty wound on his face. Luckily I got there in time to catch it." They all looked at the large boat, a cabin cruiser, and had to weigh over seven-thousand kilograms. "Taught the dumbass a lesson for that stunt."

Yawara turned back to Ranma, smiled widely, and gave a thumbs-up. "I approve!"

Ranma smirked at the tall, muscular man in a frilly skirt. But her attention was grabbed as Shino stepped towards her. "Ummm is something wro–" Ranma was interrupted from asking her question as the woman leaned down and hugged her.

"Thank you," Shino whispered into her ear.

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

Ai sat there gathering her thoughts after the Detective left. She wasn't entirely sure how to approach the conundrum that Sakura presented. She decided to start with something she figured Sakura would be pleased to know. "Sakura-chan, do you want a status update on our patients?"

Sakura sighed, much of the tension going out of her, at least for now. "Yes, please."

Ai smiled, glad to have found something to relax them both. "Our critical patients are all on the mend. Their wounds are healed, with only a few having faint scarring. Those may heal further, but I don't know if your quirk will allow those to heal naturally."

Sakura gave her a confused look for a moment, one Ai mentally made a note about before she continued. "I did observe that your healing was not just healing the skin beneath, but also the muscles, nerves, blood veins, and even bone. We took some scanners to all the wounds to ensure nothing was missed, and you did a spectacular job!"

Ai gave her most expansive smile, which had the effect of making Sakura blush. Ai had to giggle at how cute it looked on her, which made Sakura pout, and further giggles resulted. After calming herself, her report continued. "The patient's hemoglobin levels are low but within safety levels. Some other doctors are already prescribing medicine and diets to increase their iron levels."

"Young Yoshi, the boy whose arm you re-attached, is doing well. His doctor put him through various tests to ensure the reattachment got all the bones, muscles, and nerves. Last I heard, they had a few tests left they wanted to try, but the attachment results are far better than we could have done."

"Good," Sakura said as she smiled softly, "re-attaching limbs can be tricky."

"Yes, they are. But that does lead us to one concern." Once Sakura looked her in the eyes, Ai continued, "We were worried about whether your quirk had a time limit attached to it?"

"What?" Sakura looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"Does your Quirk reverse its effects after a certain time? We want to be sure in case the wounds might re-open."

"No, my healing does not reverse itself," Sakura said, confusion still evident. "What do you mean 'quirk'?"

That brought Ai up short. "What? What do you mean?"

"I have no idea what you mean when you say quirk. I am familiar with the definition, but the colloquialism doesn't work with how you use it."

Ai was thoroughly confused now, much like how Sakura appeared to be. How could Sakura, a trained field medic, not know the definition of a quirk? Especially after using her own quirk to perform miracles? Then she thought of some of what Detective Tsukauchi had described of her possible upbringing. If she had been personally trained and made to feel her quirk differently, she might not realize the significance of it. "I mean the special ability you were born with, the one that allowed you to heal your patients."

"Are you talking about a kekkei genkai?"

"Bloodline ability?" Ai was unfamiliar with the word's usage, though she quickly thought of some context that might explain it. "Well, in some ways, yes. Plenty of children inherit their parent's quirks. But I meant, in general, that most people have a quirk."

"Are you talking about chakra?"

Another unfamiliar word, at least in the context it was used. "I… think we might be speaking about the same thing. Here, let me show you my quirk." Ai raised her hand and lit the dim room. Her hand glowed a soft white light under her skin. She held her hand out for Sakura as she reached forward to feel it.

"That isn't chakra." Sakura's hands felt Ai's momentarily as her face went through the gambit of emotions, such as amazement, confusion, and finally settling on fear.

"This is my quirk. Certainly nothing fancy like shooting beams of energy or transforming." Ai looked at Sakura calmly as she tried to get Sakura to understand what quirks are, "is chakra what you call your quirk?"

"No, chakra is the energy inside us that can be shaped to do what we want."

"What energy?" Ai was worried about the fear in Sakura's eyes and still wondered why there was still confusion.

"My chakra has recovered enough to let me show you." Sakura then proceeded to do something similar to what Ai had done, but it was a small and local glow and was external instead of internal. "This is my chakra, shown externally."

"That is just manifesting your quirk, correct?" Ai had seen that effect before when she was healing flesh.

"While I don't understand what a quirk is exactly, it is not chakra. What else can you do with your quirk?"

"That is it. If I work on it, I could brighten it, but my quirk is limited. I tend to use it as a night light." Ai was smiling at her small joke, trying to alleviate the tension. "Other people's quirks can be even more limiting or expansive."

"That doesn't sound like chakra at all."

"What do you mean?"

"Everyone is born with chakra; as we age, we are trained to focus our energies to grow our chakra and learn to shape it. After it is shaped, we release it to perform actions."

"What… kind of actions?"

"Almost anything. Thousands of techniques."

Ai was worried but intrigued by what Sakura was talking about. "What kind of techniques?"

"Things like my healing. I learned that from my… sensei. She taught me most of what I know about medical-jutsu."

"Taught?" Ai was having a difficult time understanding what Sakura was getting at. Quirks tended to do specific things. Sometimes you could expand it with training and ingenuity, but the way Sakura spoke of it, it seemed like others she knew could do the same thing she did.

"Yes, taught. While some Jutsu are tailored to certain bloodlines, most Jutsu could be used by anyone. So long as you had enough energy and knowledge on how to shape it."

"Besides your… medical-jutsu, what other techniques are you talking about?"

Sakura paused, hesitating to tell her anything before her expression firmed. "Growing up, we attend an academy that teaches us what we need to know. Let me show you one of the techniques we are taught."

Ai watched as the girl's hands pressed together in different configurations, like ritualistic hand gestures you might find at shrines. Sakura then called out, "Release!" There was a poof of smoke that appeared next to Sakura's bed, startling Ai.

"Oh my!" Ai shouted. She was surprised to see a duplicate of Sakura standing at the side of her bed. The copy stood there and smirked at Ai as she tried to understand what was happening. Though, Ai noted it wasn't an exact duplicate. It was wearing something similar to what she had first seen her wearing, along with a heavy green vest and a headband with a metal plate with a symbol etched into it. Sakura's face also looked different.

Before either of them could continue, there was a knock on the door, followed by the Detective's voice. "Is everything alright in there?"

Ai took a moment to get her wits about her before looking at Sakura, silently asking her for permission, and Sakura nodded. "We are okay, Detective. But you'll want to come inside."

The door opened, showing the concerned face of the Detective. "What's the mat– what!?" Ai noticed Sakura's amused smile as the Detective looked on with some shock at the clone beside her bed.

"Sakura created this… clone."

"What!?" The Detective's face whipped to Ai.

Sakura spoke up then, "Shuzenji-san showed me her quirk. It is nothing like my own… ability."

"Yes, quirks run a range of different abilities. That should not be surprising for your quirk to be different from hers." The Detective seemed lost as to what was going on.

"Sakura explained that she has an energy inside her, what she calls chakra, that she was taught how to shape from a young age. She and others were taught how to create this clone."

"But her quirk was reported to be regarding healing, was it not?"

Sakura looked at the Detective more intensely before she addressed him, "I think I know what may be happening. I am willing to provide information about myself and where I am from, but I need information first."

"Depending on what you need to know, we can work with that," Detective Tsukauchi replied just as intensely.

"I doubt this will be sensitive information," Sakura waited until the Detective nodded. "Where am I?"

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

"What is the blip?" Shinya asked. The story so far had been riveting and fantastical, even by the standards of their world. Advanced technology, abilities that could be created in laboratories or accidents, alien invasions, sentient super robots, sorcerers, and gods? All of it happening in a world without quirks. Where over 99.999% of the population had no special abilities. Then traveling to another world to fight an absolute monster, someone with capabilities that make the famed All-For-One look like a toddler. Hearing how he scoured an entire moon's surface and threw it at the hero sitting in front of them. How, after picking up one of those stones, he could reverse time!

His A.I. provided images and videos of some of the events to accompany his storytelling. Especially the ones that had occurred on the planet Titan. Seeing that monster perform his violent acts was very convincing for the three.

"It was Thanos' goal. I was told he traveled to different planets to cull half of the population to help with 'overpopulation,'" the hero said while using his forefingers and middle fingers to mime air quotes. "But it was too slow for him; he had to go planet to planet to do this. So he wanted a way to speed it up and do it in one shot. The Infinity Stones were his path to this. The… blip… was him accomplishing it. Half of all life in our universe turned to dust."

"What!?" All three listeners shouted at once. That was beyond the imagination to occur. That made the dark times after quirks started appearing pale compared to the horror this blip must have been.

"Yeah, it was horrible. Our world kind of… gave up in a lot of ways. I didn't experience that, though, since I was one of the ones that turned to dust," Spider-man said, dropping yet another bombshell on the threesome.

"You… died? But you're alive now? What happened?"

"So, after Thanos left Earth, the Avengers gathered and went after him. But the bastard had destroyed the stones, so they could not reverse the actions. During the blip, another hero called Ant-man disappeared, using some special particles that, when used properly, could shrink or expand the distance between your molecules. It also did some funky stuff with force, gravity, and other natural laws. I never heard an excellent explanation of how they are supposed to work. Ned hypothesized that Hank Pym purposely misleads people about the science of it."

"Anyways, Ant-man, or Scott Lang, had been trapped in the Quantum Realm, which is basically the space between subatomic particles. Time and other rules of our universe change or flow differently down there. Five years after the blip occurred, a freak incident returned him to normal, but he only experienced about five hours there. The rest of the Avengers realized it was a possible means of time travel. Mr. Stark found a way to navigate through time, so they went into the past, got all the infinity stones, and brought them to the future. Doctor Banner snapped us all back to life."

"That's incredible," David said. It was like reading a crazy science fiction novel or a comic book.

"Unfortunately, when they went back in time, Thanos and his army were able to tag along. So we had to fight his whole army and him as well. It almost spelled disaster since Thanos was able to get the glove with the stones. We only won because Mr. Stark stole the stones at the last second, then used them to wipe him and his army out."

The sadness Spider-man showed as he told this part made it apparent something more had happened. "What else happened?" Hayate asked.

"Just wielding the stones… they put out gamma radiation. A lot of it."

"Oh no," David realized the implications immediately.

"Mr. Stark died just to try to bring me back. He wanted to bring everyone back, but I was told by his wife that I was the main reason he did it."

The three listeners had a difficult time finding anything to say to that. They all dealt with heroics in various degrees. To go to such lengths, those people were true heroes. So they waited in silence for Spider-man to pick up his tale.

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

"Errr… so, whatcha want?" Ranma asked after Shino let her go, turning her face to the side while playing with her pigtail. Shino noted that her face had a decent amount of red, which made her look so cute!

Deciding it was time to get to business, Shino opted for straightforwardness. "Endeavor asked us to question you."

"Who?" Ranma asked with a confused expression.

"The big guy with the flames," Ryuko responded.

"Oh! Him. Let me guess, he still doesn't believe me?"

"Not yet," Shino said as she saw Ranma give an eye roll. "In our line of work, we do encounter many strange events. But we also encounter people that attempt to deceive in one form or another, as well as people that are deluded." Shino saw the girl was considering her words as she frowned in thought, "Have you heard of Occam's Razor?"

"Ummm, no?"

"Occam's Razor stipulates that whatever is the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one."

Ranma snorted at that, "Not for me! Tends to be more of the opposite in my experience. Most of the explanations end up more from left field."

Shino raised an eyebrow at that claim but decided to go along with it for now to get more information. Shino didn't think Ranma would try lying for malicious reasons, but there were plenty of cases of good people lying to protect themselves or others. Sometimes it was better to go along with people's stories. It lets you get a better picture of their delusions or sometimes makes it easier to catch liars in the act.

"Sooo! Ranma! How'd you get so strong?" Tomoko asked as she took a seat at the counter.

"I'm a martial artist. I've been training my whole life." Ranma seemed rather proud of that fact.

"Oh?" Yawara's attention was grabbed. Shino recognized the look in his eyes, especially when anything regarding training was brought up.

"Yep! I'm the best!" Ranma cried out with a look of smugness as she stood up straight with her arms crossed.

"And what is your quirk?" Shino asked while she gauged Ranma's reaction.

"Quirk? Why do you people keep asking about that?" Ranma asked. She seemed more exhausted by the question than annoyed. Shino couldn't detect any falseness to her confusion, and so far, Ranma read like an open book.

"We ask because eighty percent of the world's population has one."

"Why wouldn't it be a hundred percent? I thought everyone had a personality quirk. It tends to be what makes us unique, right?" Ranma was rubbing her head in confusion at the constant discussion around quirks.

"That is an older definition than what we tend to use these days," Shino said. "Quirk is a word we use to describe a person's special ability they are born with."

"Special ability?"

"You saw Endeavor being on fire, correct?" Ryuko asked. "Or the 'dumbass' with the muscles?" She giggled at the playground insult of the notorious villain while Ranma nodded. "Endeavor's quirk allows him to put out flames from his body, while 'dumbass' could grow and manipulate his muscle fibers."

Ranma tilted her head as she considered that, "Oh? I just thought the big guy was related to Saffron or something. Minus the bird parts."

"Saffron?" Shino asked. "Who is that?"

"A brat I had to fight a year ago. He could put out a ton of fire, too."

That confused Shino. Ranma had claimed to be from a hundred and fifty years ago, meaning quirks had only started to be known about. Something was off, but she couldn't put a finger on what.

"Then how are you so physically strong?" Ryuko asked.

"Training," Ranma replied, her eyes asking her why she would question it.

"Training wouldn't get those kinds of results. Not without something to enhance it," Ryuko responded, crossing her arms as she challenged her.

"Well, I guess if you don't account for Ki, then I could see where you are coming from. But that's still just training."

"Ki?" That got Yawara's attention as he leaned forward, "Actually using Ki? Are you a Ki Adept?"

"Yeah? That is a word sometimes used to describe us.

"I know some circles tout that Ki usage is a means by which some pro-heroes can enhance themselves. Even when their quirks don't enhance their own body normally." Yawara remarked as he rubbed his chin in thought. "It is claimed that those that push their bodies to the limit can get stronger, faster, tougher, and perceive more around them."

Ranma nodded, glad one of them was knowledgeable so she wouldn't have to start from scratch on it.

"Really?" Ryuko asked, curious about what her teammate was explaining.

"Yes, but it is rare and is only a noted minor improvement, at least compared to what we heard Ranma was able to perform," Yawara said as he looked at Ranma for more of an explanation.

"That's beginner's stuff," Ranma seemed dismissive of those noted achievements. "I got to that step when I was six."

Yawara narrowed his eyes as he looked at Ranma, "The claims I hear are only from those who would go Plus Ultra in their training. Only the greatest of heroes or martial artists could achieve such."

"Plus Ultra?" Ranma repeated the unfamiliar phrase before she shrugged and handled the question. "Yeah, you have to push yourself to your limits constantly. You can unlock Ki unconsciously, but to go past it, you have to mentally focus on it and take control of it. After that, more training allows you to grow and expand what you can use and help enhance yourself further."

"So… her abilities are not a quirk?" Shino asked Yawara, who seemed to know what Ranma was talking about.

"Nope!"

Shino twisted her head towards the teammate she had not expected an answer from. Tomoko had a big smile as she seemed pleased with being right on the answer. That was when Shino considered the nature of her teammates' quirk and what it sometimes told her. One part that was not often stated was that it could tell her whether someone had a quirk. In hindsight, it should have been something they started with. Shino's head dropped to her palm as she knew her teammate would be rubbing it in their faces for the next few weeks.

"If your abilities are based entirely on Ki, with no quirk, how did you train?" Yawara asked; he was taking this rather seriously.

Ryuko was concerned about Yawara's reaction, "Why is that important?"

Yawara's eyes narrowed as he pinned Ranma to the spot, "the claims I was told were from people who had to go through regular life-threatening events. Extreme combat. And Ranma here just claimed she had accomplished this when she was six. And apparently hasn't stopped."

Now Shino was catching on to what Yawara was implying. She, too, fixed Ranma to the spot with her eyes as she repeated the question. "How were you trained? Give us examples."

Ranma didn't react to the glares at all. Shrugging, she answered them, "started with days of katas and full contact sparring. Not much focus on physical training at first. After I unconsciously unlocked my Ki, concentration on physical abilities was added."

"How much time was spent training? What about other activities such as school or relaxation?" Ryuko asked.

"Almost all the time I was awake was training. We trained while we ate, and I did what I could during school hours. At least when I attended school."

Shino was starting to hate these lines of questions, but they needed to be asked. "How do you train while eating?"

"We would try to steal each other's food, so if I was too slow, I wouldn't get much to eat," Ranma said so casually that it was apparent she didn't think it was a big deal.

"They starved you!?" Ryuko asked, clearly outraged. She wasn't alone in that opinion.

"Not really, it felt like it plenty of times, but I would always have ways of getting more. For years I thought Pop just loved to stuff his belly and lord it over me, but recently I realized he always made sure I had enough or had ways to get enough. He used it as a means of driving me."

"How were you not constantly in the hospital recovering from injuries or over exhaustion?" Shino asked.

"I didn't think about it much when I was younger, but my old man was very careful with the pace he pushed me. Always right on the edge, but not enough to seriously injure myself with debilitating injuries. At least until I was able to heal faster with Ki. During times of exhaustion, we would meditate or do less intensive physical training, like hand-eye coordination or precision by picking up single pieces of rice with chopsticks."

"After I was able to use Ki, we picked up the pace and kept it to a knife's edge. While I was annoyed, he only went overboard a few times." Ranma shrugged, accepting and appreciating most of what her old man had done for her. Didn't stop her from beating him black and blue at times, though.

"Is one of those times the pit?"

That question seemed to startle Ranma as she snapped her head to look at Tomoko. Shino also looked at her teammate to wonder what she was talking about.

"Wha-what are you talking about?"

Shino turned her gaze back to Ranma, realizing she was trying to dodge the question. Shino was getting a lump in her stomach at the implication. If the training Ranma had just talked about didn't bother her, what kind of training would get Ranma to want to avoid it?

Tomoko lost her serious expression, instead just giving Ranma another broad smile. "Nothing!"

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

"Here they are, Detective!"

Naomasa turned around to the officer and accepted the materials, "Thank you, Officer Sone." The man saluted after he was done before promptly leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

He set the material on Sakura's bed and shuffled through them to find a few specific ones. He pulled out a detailed map of Japan first. He unfolded it and turned it towards the young girl. He then pointed towards an area near the midway point between the island chains of his nation. "This is Tokyo. As I said earlier, we are in the district of Hosu, west of Tokyo."

Sakura studied the map intently for a minute. "How did you– never mind, I can ask that later," she mumbled. "None of these land masses look familiar. But what is the scale?"

Naomasa pointed to the small markers near one corner of the map, "these lines mark distances per section, so you can use it to estimate how large an area or distance between different points."

Sakura used her fingers to track the map before she pulled her hand away in surprise. "This island is much larger than most of what I am familiar with."

"I suspected as much. Here, let me get a map of Asia out."

After he finished that task, he gave it to her. She repeated her earlier study of inspecting the map closely. "Again, nothing looks familiar."

Naomasa chuckled; he was going to enjoy this next part. It was fun when you could healthily shatter someone's worldview. He pulled out the following map and gave it to her when it was ready.

When Sakura noticed that the previous map only covered a small section of this map, she was left speechless. She did notice some oddities with this map; entire sections were missing on the top and bottom of the map. "What are these missing sections?"

After pointing at a few of the sections, Naomasa chuckled. "Those sections are drawn that way to deal with the curvature of the Earth. Creating a 2D image of a 3D sphere is not so easy without losing things. A 3D model of Earth or maps only dealing with those sections are easier to see without that problem."

Sakura nodded her head, accepting his explanation. She looked through every land mass and island chain, trying to find her home. He wasn't sure where it was, but the longer it took her, the more worried he was.

After ten minutes, she sighed in defeat. "I don't see it here." She then shuffled the map to some of the oceans, especially the Pacific. "One possibility is that there are land masses you haven't found in these oceans."

"How large is the land you come from," Naomasa asked.

"The nation I am from is roughly a quarter of the size of Japan, while all of the surrounding nations together are roughly four times the size of Japan."

That startled Naomasa. "That's impossible."

Sakura blinked at him in confusion. "Why? If your boats are stopped before making it to our landmass, you wouldn't be able to find it, correct?"

"While boats having difficulty navigating parts of the world is not unusual, what you are proposing is impossible, but it has nothing to do with boats."

"What do you mean?"

"A land mass that size would easily have been detected by our satellites."

"What is a satellite?"

"A satellite is an object with various instruments that is shot into space and then orbits the Earth. They perform various tasks, one of which is to take images of the Earth and send them down to us via signals."

"What? From space?" Sakura was clearly confused, "but how?"

"We send it to space with large rockets, then using electronic signals, they send their data back to us."

Sakura didn't look to believe him, so Naomasa took out his phone and started fiddling with it.

"What is that?" Sakura asked as she stared at his phone.

"It is a cell phone, a multi-purpose tool used for processing information and communications," Ai replied, speaking up for the first time as the Detective was busy looking for something.

It didn't take him long, but he turned it back around so Sakura could see the screen. She was clearly surprised by the images appearing there. Then Naomasa pressed the play button on the video.

Sakura marveled at the little device, showing moving images that displayed a large object in the distance. Suddenly, the base of the thing shot a great blast of fire and smoke much larger than the object itself. After several seconds, it lifted off the ground, slowly gaining acceleration and rising into the sky. Ai heard the countdown and the booster ignition as the device played it back.

After the video was finished, Naomasa held out his hand for the device. Sakura was marveling at it, both for the device, the video, and what it showed. She did hand it back, and Naomasa proceeded to do more with the phone until he found another video to play. He gave it back to Sakura and hit play again.

This time, Sakura saw a man… floating with other objects next to him. He wore a blue one-piece suit of some sort, talking calmly towards the screen before the picture moved to show outside the dark window she had seen. She initially didn't know what she was looking at, but it clicked. Some areas on the object looked like the land masses she saw on the global map. Sakura sat the phone down, clearly shocked by the revelations.

Naomasa took his phone back and placed it in his pants pocket. "Now you can maybe understand how I was saying a land mass that size would be impossible to hide."

Sakura nodded her head before she grasped her forehead with both hands.

"Do you want to explain to me what is going on?" Naomasa was curious about the girl. The girl was skilled and kept the information provided as minimal as possible but had not appeared to be deceiving them.

His family had a history of lie-detector quirks. He had become skilled at it just by observing his family and their interactions outside of it, including the little tells and hints. He had been forced to do that to keep up with the rest of his family, having been born quirkless.

It was one of the reasons he was a well sought-after Detective.

"I was hoping my first theory was correct. But it can't be if what you showed me is true." She didn't even look up as she said it.

"And what do you think is happening?"

"This isn't my world."

That brought Naomasa up short, "Explain yourself."

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

"That was when Doctor Strange was trying to hold the fractured parts of reality back. I... came up with a solution, only I think it backfired in a way I wasn't expecting." Spider-man said as he continued his story.

All three were spellbound by the story he told. Hayate and Shinya could understand just how difficult of a situation he had been put through. Being tricked by a liar like Beck, they knew the hero would not give up his suit willingly. And they couldn't fault him for it, considering his past experience and that they knew their society wasn't any better in many ways. Then the final parting shot reveals his identity to the world, splitting his world's opinion as to whether he is a hero or a villain.

The first part, of revealing their identity, they couldn't understand very well since almost all heroes were known. But they had heard stories of villains going after pro-hero families in the past. If the support structure wasn't there in society to protect the heroes and their families, hiding your identity made more sense.

Both hero and the Detective were very familiar with the fickleness of the public. It was part of why they didn't raise much of a stink over actions from the Safety Commission and why trying to keep the public's trust was so essential for them.

While his actions of going to the sorcerer to cast a spell on the world so they would forget were a little extreme, they could understand it. The fault lay with both Spider-man and the sorcerer, but it mostly came down to communications, assumptions, and poor planning.

Then there were the events of people from other universes coming to his own, the truth about what happened to them in their own universes, and the fact that the young man took extraordinary steps to save them. The loss of the only family he had left due to trying to help them struck them hard.

Knowing how dark of a place he must have been, they couldn't fault him, his anger, sadness, and hatred. Getting help from different versions of himself, men that the hero seemed to treat more like older brothers from how he spoke of them. The drive to still save the villains and succeed. That struck them deeply.

"The solution I came up with was that everyone would forget who I was. Peter Parker."

Hayate caught on to it first, "if they don't remember who you were, then there would be nothing for the 'spell' to latch onto."

"Yeah, but as I was leaving, that was when I showed up here."

"Instead of the world forgetting who you were, it… kicked you out?" David proposed.

"I think so," the hero responded, "I don't even know if anyone even remembers me on my world anymore. That or if it just kicked me out, and they wonder where I am."

All four sat there, letting the weight of their emotions settle. Eventually, the Detective picked up the conversation, "That… is quite the tale. And that complicates things more than we expected." He rubbed his brow as he tried to think of the best way to phrase things. "Our world is different in some ways, but in others, they are similar. Much like how you described these 'Sokovia Accords,' our world created a profession called a Professional Hero, or Pro-Hero for short. While your world only has a few enhanced individuals, our world is littered with them. Over eighty percent of the world population has a quirk."

"Eighty… percent? Oh… crap." The hero seemed to grasp the significance of that fairly quickly. Hayate had already determined the young hero had a genius-level intellect.

"As a result of a series of mistakes, built on mistakes, the world's governments licensed our heroes, but they must go through schooling and take a series of tests to get that license. The license tests a range of skill requirements to ensure those we put into the field have a minimum capability of performing the job."

"So, like a Medical Doctorate? With getting a medical license?"

"Yes, a very apt comparison," David noted. "Normally, schooling is required for it, but there are some cases where a person can take the license without it. But it is infrequent."

"And I don't have a license," the hero stated the obvious.

"Yes, what you performed was an act of vigilantism. The government does not look fondly on it and can make getting a license harder or impossible," Shinya said. "I've met some other vigilantes and have even been ordered by the government to capture them. It is never a pleasant duty, especially when the hero did a good job."

Spider-man cringed inside his mask, dreading where this conversation was going.

"But your situation is more akin to someone breaking the law where no one got hurt, but due to a reasonable case of ignorance, could not know the law." Hayate did not like the circumstances here; he was an officer of the law and followed it. "Some laws were written to be flexible, but heroics is one area more complicated than most. There is some leeway we could use, but I don't think we can use it."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't want the information getting out about your suit. Not at this time," Hayate replied as he looked at the hero. "There are going to be too many competing interests that will want to get their hands on it. Official, unofficial, and criminal elements. If they knew what you had, you wouldn't get a moment's rest. The government may decide to rig any evaluation so that you are forced to hand it over or be hunted for it by people like him," Hayate said while pointing at the pro-hero sitting next to him. "And I am unsure if I can trust any government to have that power."

"So what can I do?" Spider-man asked, clearly concerned.

"Two paths, neither of which I like, but one is unfair to you due to your history. Option one: we go very public with everything. Make it very difficult for the governments or criminal groups to try to target you because the spotlight will make it harder for them to make excuses. Criminal elements will also have a harder time since they tend to require working in the shadows."

"Even without hearing it, I'm inclined to go for option two already," Peter uttered dryly while Shinya snorted.

"I think you'll prefer this one. Option two: we hide and bury the incident as much as possible. But that will mean you'll have to stay hidden or out of the way until things have calmed down. And basically, sweep this under the rug legally."

"I… might have a suggestion to help with that," David claimed. When he had everyone's attention, he continued, "We could say that we were testing an experimental super-suit. Specifically, my team. Edgeshot can say he gave temporary authorization once the severity of the incident was reported. He then comes with me to I-Island; it would give him the time to acclimate himself to our world and keep him out of the public eye. Any questions or references can be forwarded to us regarding the circumstances. We can just say it is confidential and that we can't reveal the details of it."

Hayate hummed as he rubbed his chin in thought. "That could work, but this might bring a little heat on you, Edgeshot."

The pro-hero nodded, accepting the risk.

Hayate turned to Spider-man, "Unfortunately, that will mean you'll have to remove the mask so we can create an identity for you. I have some contacts that can help. I am sure Dr. Shields and Edgeshot might also have some means of helping with those."

The hero sighed, hating the scenario he was in. "I really don't want to do this again, but I don't have a choice. Karen seems to like you guys as well." He reached his hand up to pull on the top of his mask, it loosened a bit, but he hesitated before pulling it off.

The other three gasped after looking him over. He was a plain Caucasian youth with short brown hair. Even with the already healing bruises, dirty face, and messy hair, he could be considered handsome… in a few years. They were shocked because he did not look to be the eighteen years old he had claimed, but more like he was fourteen.

"My name is Peter Parker."

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

Endeavor landed on the forest floor as he inspected the spot he was told about. It had taken him nearly thirty minutes to find it, but the girl had been reasonably accurate on direction and distance. The problem had been how inconspicuous the spot was. Finding a small, damaged tree in the region of a square kilometer was difficult.

He inspected the tree, seeing several branches heavily damaged or destroyed, along with the trunk having a chunk taken out of it. The way the branches bent indicated something fell instead of being broken from below or the sides. It also lined up with the small trail of dirt of an object impacting the ground.

Considering the size of the impact, it wasn't likely to have been a smaller object traveling at high speeds or a larger one traveling at slow speeds. The weight would be around forty to sixty kilograms, and a fall time of three seconds, putting it about fifty meters or more in the air.

The girl likely fit within that range, which increased the likelihood of her telling the truth about that part at least. He kneeled closer to the ground as he felt around it for the softness of the dirt, further confirming his earlier estimates.

He started looking around the area for other indicators when he heard angry barking. He looked up and saw a squirrel on the damaged tree near one of the damaged limbs. Appeared to be a brave, yet foolish, member of its species. Enji ignored it as he turned back to inspect the surroundings. He saw no other apparent signs to give away the story.

Enji shot up to the trees to hover near the tips, knowing the girl could easily reach these points. He saw the top of the village and headed towards it. He wasn't bothering to go all out, so it took him a minute to arrive.

He landed in front of the restaurant he had left the girl and expected the Pussycats to be. After opening the door, he was greeted by the sight of the girl looking through the cupboards, obviously searching for something. He saw she had already collected a few steel skewers, so she had a plan for something. The Pussycats were distributed in different parts of the room, with Mandalay and Ragdoll sitting while Tiger and Pixie-Bob were standing or leaning against something. He also noticed that their helmets, gloves, and tails were absent. After a moment, he found them all piled up by the doorway next to him.

"I am unsure if I wish to beat on your father or shake his hand," Tiger said.

"Eh, get in line. You're not the only one with a bone to pick with him. And their claims are better than yours. When Mom learned about some of the training, she whacked the panda on the head with blunt objects any time she saw him. It wasn't until he went away for a week on a 'training trip' that she cooled down enough from it. Still hits him occasionally when she is reminded of it."

"What kind of blunt objects?" Shino seemed eager to hear the answer to that, which was surprising for Enji to hear from the kind and soft-spoken woman.

The girl didn't even turn around from her task as she answered. "Whatever she could get her hands on. Plates, pans, tables, statues, whatever the heaviest or hardest thing she could lift that was nearby. Tendo-san wasn't happy about some of the destruction she caused, but he shut up and hid whenever she looked his way." She closed the current cupboard after scouring it and moving on to the next one.

Enji wasn't sure what kind of conversation he had stumbled into but decided to avoid it for the time being. He coughed into his hand to get the other heroes' attention, which succeeded.

"A word? Outside?" After receiving some nods, Enji stepped outside and waited. He leaned against the porch as he heard them speak to the girl, and a quick reply was given. Once all the Pussycats had left the restaurant, he addressed Mandalay. "I inspected what I believe was the site of her arrival. It matched her description, and I saw no additional signs to indicate anything else. She appeared to fall about fifty meters, damaging the tree and the ground around it. So that part of her tale checks out. What have you found?"

Mandalay seemed to gather her thoughts for a moment before she replied. "We haven't been able to get much, but she is most likely telling the truth. About all of it."

Enji's eyebrow rose at that declaration, "How did you determine that?"

"She reads as a very open book. While she could be an excellent liar, I find it unlikely. Especially since the things she has claimed have panned out to have truth to them." Enji gave her a look to continue, so she did. "While we can't verify her claim of being from the past very well, the details she has given show she's not familiar with quirks at all, but not necessarily special abilities. It did take some time before they were given the label of quirks, and she spoke as if she encountered some of the early quirk users, maybe even before the earliest recordings."

"Interesting. It is often said it was the 'earliest recorded' appearance of a quirk; there is the possibility others had them before then. What about her claim of her abilities not being a quirk? Is it another case of not knowing what it is called?"

"No," Mandalay replied before she glanced at Ragdoll and Tiger, "she claimed it was pure training but did stipulate that Ki manipulation was involved."

"Ki? I know some circles tout it as being real, but no one has displayed usage of it to the degree she has shown." Enji was at least intrigued, though still skeptical.

Tiger took the reins, "The claims I have heard say you must push yourself hard and constantly to gain any sort of build-up of Ki, significant improvement in performance compared to before. But Ranma claims that that is the beginner's steps and that there are tiers of Ki usage far beyond our current knowledge. She also claims to have unlocked that at the age of six."

"Six?" Enji was surprised. He understood pushing yourself to your limits and starting to train while you were young were crucial to achieving success. But from what he remembered of the claims to unlock Ki, it was a brutal and dangerous affair.

"Yes," Mandalay affirmed while rubbing her forehead. "She says her father kept her at a knife edge on training, pushing her training to extremes we haven't attempted. Her father appeared to have known what he was doing, giving her the drive and encouragement to push her boundaries for years. The fact she claims she was rarely injured enough not to train speaks of his capability."

Their conversation was momentarily interrupted by a shout of "Yatta!" from inside the restaurant before it was swiftly ignored.

"What did Ragdoll confirm? The reports on her Search quirk mention being able to tell when someone is quirkless."

Enji smirked as Mandalay's hand palmed her face. Someone had forgotten some aspects of a teammate's quirk.

"No quirk!" Ragdoll exclaimed, "She doesn't have a quirk!"

Enji was quiet as he thought about the enigma the girl represented. If it was confirmed that she did not have a quirk or use it on Muscular, then there was little in the way of any legal trouble since she did not use a quirk on another person, that resulted in injury. While underaged quirk usage was not typically heavily penalized, when it involved the injury of another person and was intentional, it did become more serious. Her actions would align more with standard assault and not assault while using a quirk.

The fact her physical assault was in defense of another and did save the lives of two pro-heroes against a known mass murderer would make anyone hesitant to even try to take action against her. While it still would be necessary to get her tested since her abilities being a quirk that could bypass Ragdoll's own quirk was a possibility, it did not seem likely.

This left the question of what to do with her. She was too young to live independently, and foster care would have difficulty handling her. She was too brazen with her usage of her skills, especially if it is proven not to be a quirk. That could cause all sorts of complications and concern down the line. Trouble that would likely lead to his agency being called up regularly to deal with it since he had first contact with her and made the evaluation. Not to mention how brazen she was in admitting her situation.

Just dumping her into the system wasn't going to work, and the girl did not seem the type to stay there. She had a disregard for authority, and her abilities would make it impossible to restrain her without calling certain pro-heroes, which would likely include himself. That would mark his record to a degree and could quickly become a public mess.

He eyeballed the heroes in front of him as an idea came to him. Though, why Ragdoll seemed distracted by something, he didn't know.

"How is your interaction with her? From what I could tell, she seemed to respond well to your questions."

"Our… initial interaction was not very good," Mandalay said as she looked at her feet. "I have a theory on why, but I don't want to push her on it yet. But she quickly warmed up to us after that. She listened and answered our questions and seemed very relaxed around us."

When Mandalay looked up, her face went white as she looked towards him. Her hands covered her eyes as she whispered, "Oh no!" Shinji figured she had realized where he was leading the conversation, but then Pixie-Bob started giggling to the side. Enji looked in her direction, but she lost it even further as she bent over, laughing and pointing in his direction.

Enji was now confused, especially when Tiger pulled out his cell phone and took a picture. Ragdoll was smiling as usual when Enji realized her eyes weren't looking directly at him but off to his side somewhat. And what was that smell?

"Hey, can you turn it up some? They're cooking too slowly."

Enji turned to his left and then up as he saw the girl hanging upside down from the patio rafters. She had some skewers with pieces of marshmallow on them, which were held directly over his flames.

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

Ai sat there, trying to digest the story that Sakura was weaving. She could tell that the Detective was skeptical about her story, but she was wearing him down, having collapsed into his seat as she told her tale. She and the Detective had obviously considered horrible scenarios that Sakura had been made to endure regarding turning children into soldiers with useful or dangerous quirks. Training them as brainwashed soldiers that performed deeds on the black market, criminal groups, or various governments.

Reality was far, far worse.

While she obviously left specific details about her own Village, or city, as a more appropriate definition to describe the size, she was willing to give generalities. Villages where children are taught from a young age to be killers. Trained to be ninjas. That surprised the two of them when Sakura revealed she was a ninja.

When questioned why they would need to be trained as killers, Sakura revealed some of the overall states of the world she was from. It was like hearing about Feudal Japan but with superpowers. Wars, spying, backstabbing, assassinations, and protection details. Those were all common occurrences, often advocated and paid for by the rich and powerful that saw easy ways to get richer and more powerful.

When she told them of some of the things she had done as a child to advance her career as a ninja, had initially made the Detective and Ai angry at the Village for doing such things before Sakura assured them that her Village had taken significant steps to minimize the negative aspects of her Village's actions. Detective Tsukauchi tried to point out how that was just trying to excuse away atrocious behavior when Sakura revealed what the other Villages would do to their people. Her Village sounded like a saint compared to some of the examples she gave. Actions like pitting entire classes of students against each other to the death, leaving few of them alive.

When it was questioned why they would start these behaviors in the first place, Sakura revealed what life was like for ninja clans before the Villages. The constant war between competing clans, seeing entire bloodlines wiped out regularly, including any children. Ai and Detective Tsukauchi realized that while her village was severely flawed by today's standards, it had been a giant leap forward compared to hundreds or even thousands of years of bloodshed.

A few additional showings of her chakra usage helped strengthen her argument. The clone, a transformation, water manipulation, and other abilities she said she could perform.

Others around her being able to perform many of the same Jutsus meant that this chakra energy was tangible, and it did not behave like quirks. This gave significant weight to her words.

Then Sakura revealed what had recently been occurring, the war that was fought, and where she had just come from. She explained about the chakra beasts, monsters with the power to wipe out villages with the swipe of their tails or launch blasts up to the size of small nuclear detonations. That the war had seen most of the Villages and former enemies coming together to fight an enemy that seemed driven to destroy all of them and had the power to do it. She told them about the man known as Madara and the Ten-Tailed Beast. Then she told them about the fight with Kaguya and her abilities. Sakura had just delivered a blow to her head, allowing her teammates to finish the battle, when she found herself in their city.

Which, for Ai, explained her behavior when she first saw her appear. A young girl fighting people with monstrous strength and power that might even eclipse All Might. It was both frightening and endearing. But to go from an exhausting and horrifying battle to seeing a villain injuring civilians and getting involved, using the last of her strength to heal them. Ai felt pride towards Sakura. Too many people would consider it not their fight, or it wasn't worth the energy and resources to waste on people inconsequential to what she had been facing.

Several times, Detective Tsukauchi tried to poke holes in her story to see if he could find weak points in her theory. But Sakura's information was too complete. If Sakura's report was accurate, then these were things they would have seen.

Detective Tsukauchi remained quiet for a few minutes after Sakura had finished her tale before he finally spoke. "Haruno-san, I am sorry you had to go through all that." Sakura looked ready to argue when the Detective raised a hand to stop her. "I realize where you are from; the rules and environment are very different. I will not hold it against your village, even though I know you held back information that would make your village look bad, but they were dealing with a bad hand that was not prone to a healthy environment. It is too easy to ridicule people from a position of privilege, which we have in our own society. The best I could hope for if we make contact with your Village would be to impart knowledge, wisdom, and a helping hand."

"Thank you for that," Sakura stated. "I can understand where you are coming from. I wish and hope to change things for the better. We started making some strides during the war that I hope is continued. Maybe if we weren't at each other's throats all the time, we wouldn't have to take such drastic actions."

"While that handles the situation with where you are from, that unfortunately does not resolve what to do with you," the Detective rubbed his nose as he continued. "Do you know of any way to get home?"

"At this time? No," Sakura said as she slumped into her bed. "While I know some of the principles of space-time ninjutsu, it is a challenging area of study. The only ones I know that can breach dimensions were those with a kekkei genkai like Obito or Kaguya."

"Would your village try to reach you here?"

"I… don't know. It depends on what they know. For all I know, they could be here as well since Kaguya had previously transported us all together."

"If I could get a description of them, their abilities, and their personalities, I can keep an eye out to see if they appeared elsewhere in Japan or the world. I just hope this Kaguya isn't here with you." Sakura nodded her head in agreement.

"Unless we learn something productive about how to get you home, we are stuck with what to do with you. You have no family, resources, or knowledge about our world. By law, you are an orphan."

"I understand."

"Most orphans, especially with no family or friends to rely on, go to orphanages or a foster system. But your situation is far too complex, and I worry about other groups deciding to recruit you if they learn even a fraction of your history and capabilities. Especially our own government."

"I know the type," Sakura said with some steel. "I have no interest in working with such organizations."

"Good. I'll try to prevent any of this information from getting back to them but keep an eye out for it. With enough time, they will find out and approach you in various ways. If I catch wind of it, I'll try to warn you if I can."

"I appreciate that."

"That still leaves us with what to do with you. You're too young to be left on your own, so you need a guardian of some sort." Ai noticed that the Detective was looking at her as he talked. "I have some ideas on what we could do in that department."

Sakura got the hint as well as she stared at the older woman. Ai sighed, obviously put on the spot. "We can take her," Ai answered before smiling. "We'd be happy to help her."

"Good. I know you already have experience dealing with young teens. What's one more?"

Ai folded her arms and glared at the Detective. "Shows what you know!"

"Wait, what?" Sakura asked, her voice dripping with confusion.

"You can stay with me, Sakura-chan. My youngest recently le–"

"No, I wasn't asking about that. What did you mean by dealing with young teens?"

"My children are all adults now, so dealing with another young teenager won't be something I am inexperienced with."

Sakura looked even further confused, "I'm seventeen."

That brought Ai and the Detective up short. "You don't look like you are seventeen, dear!"

Sakura looked further confused before a bit of panic entered her eyes. "Do you have a mirror?"

Ai stood up and rummaged through a few cupboards and drawers before returning with a hand mirror. She handed it to Sakura, who immediately looked into it. Her face looked exactly like the one she had worn several years ago. Many of the subtle markers of growing into an adult had evaporated.

"What the hell!?"

-o-0-o-O-o-0-o-

[Author's Note - Sorry about the additional edits, I was trying to get formatting to work, especially with the different languages. Finally got something settled with { }. Also the header I couldn't get right at first, so I just decided to simply shorten it.]