Chapter Text
When Izuku Midoriya opened his eyes, one thing became immediately obvious - he was no longer at school. He, in fact, had absolutely no idea where he was.
Endless, featureless gray beneath his feet and stretching towards the horizon where it gave way to the sea of stars… none of which looked familiar. It reminded him of the hall where Vestiges talked to him, but One For All was no more - only sparks of energy left in his body to fade away in time.
So it couldn’t be it, right?
He is still looking around in confusion when a voice booms, startling him.
“You have a choice.” The voice is deep and reverberating. The words aren’t spoken in any language he knows, and yet he knows what they mean.
“You can refuse my offer.” The voice continues. “The remnants of your power will fade away by the time you graduate, but your fame as the man who saved the world will endure. You will become a teacher, a respected and loved guide for hero hopefuls like the one you saved during the Training Camp attack. After several years, your classmates and mentor will restore and refit the armor that the latter used during his third battle with his nemesis. You will become like your homeroom teacher, part time hero, part time teacher. The world will be at peace, and you’ll find love and happiness.”
That was… that was probably true. He could imagine himself finding happiness in teaching, it was one of the things he considered when he was thinking about his future job once One For All is gone and he felt… fine with that.
And if All Might gave him his armor, being able to become a quirkless hero would mean that he achieved his dream from before he met All Might. It was… it was everything he could dream of.
The strangest part of it all was that he believed it. He believed that whoever was talking to him truly knew his future. But why? Sir Nighteye could do it, but the man was long dead. What was going on?
If that was the other option… then what was the offer?
“And if I do accept it?” He asks.
“If you agree, you will become a hero in another world.” The Voice replies, and a wave of realization hits Midoriya. Was this… was this an isekai story selling pitch? It had to be a really weird dream, right? “You will face odds insurmountable and slay monsters and villains uncountable. But at the end of this journey, you’ll come back to your world to see that not a second has passed since your departure, and that you have regained everything you lost - and more.”
Slay… monsters and villains? Uncountable? He was supposed to… he accepted that he had to kill Shigaraki. He tried to, at least during the Jaku raid. Later on he decided to try saving Tenko Shimura and he didn’t regret that, even with what he lost, but…
“I will not kill people to get my quirk back.” He is stalwart about it. There’s no hesitation in his voice. He didn’t fight to stop All for One just to turn around and do the exact same thing that made him Izuku’s enemy in the first place.
“Good.” The Voice sounds… proud? “This is but a part of your reward. What I offer to change isn’t just your present and future - but your past as well.”
“Wha…” Midoriya lets out but fails to finish before the images begin to flood his mind.
It starts with Sir Nighteye.
He narrowly dodges the spikes that killed him, allowing him to last longer against Overhaul. He is injured, but the wounds aren’t enough to kill him, just force him to retire. What’s more important is the short-term impact of that change.
He orders the captured quirk-erasing drugs to be in another vehicle than Overhaul himself. Snatch dies during the attack, but all that the League gets is a final revenge on Overhaul. The drugs remain out of their reach.
Shigaraki doesn’t like that. He’s angry, and Garaki is making it worse by being openly condescending towards him even more for his failure.
When his quirk awakens during his fight with Re-Destro, it’s stronger. Re-Destro fails to escape in time and dies. While Shigaraki still seizes the MLA, he has to kill more of its members to achieve that - including Skeptic.
The morale of surviving MLA members is much lower. Many of them resent Shigaraki. Without Skeptic’s paranoia towards the security, Hawks’ work is easier - and much faster.
When the heroes come knocking, most of the Paranormal Liberation Front members break and scatter. More heroes engage Gigantomachia, and the casualties are lower - this includes Midnight, who survives the fight.
When Shigaraki wakes up, he is earlier into the improvement process. Decay blast starts slower. Everyone gets away in the nick of time, including Crust. Then there is the battle - but Shigaraki reaches his breaking point earlier. Aizawa and Gran Torino aren't crippled.
Twice was knocked out instead of being killed. There is no Skeptic to show Dabi’s reveal to the world. It’s just Endeavor and those around him who find out. And without Re-Destro to commit the massacre in the HPSC headquarters, its president lives.
All for One breaks out regardless and reunites with crippled Shigaraki. But he’s too weak to kill Star and Stripe, even if he injures her severely. With HPSC remaining undamaged, the international response to the crisis in Japan is much more significant - and without Skeptic’s recordings, the faith in heroes never takes such a hit.
Then there’s the final battle. There’s no Skeptic to breach UA’s cyber defenses. Many of the former MLA members went into hiding, blaming Shigaraki for what happened to their organization. With Twice alive and captured, Toga doesn’t go off the deep end so far.
Eri also heals Star and Stripe before the battle, something that All for One didn’t account for.
With the American Nr. 1 Hero taking the field, heroes are winning handily. She knocks out Dabi before he forces Endeavor to disengage. Paramedics arrive quickly enough to rescue Uraraka before Toga bleeds out, the latter stabilized and arrested.
All for One reveals his triumph card - the rewind drug he used in the original timeline. But it wasn’t Garaki who made it - he was arrested before he could do that. Instead, the drug was made by Overhaul whom All for One kidnapped after Tartarus breakout and mind controlled into making the drug for him.
It’s less stable. All for One loses his age faster. He has no time to steal any quirks, especially with Endeavor still there. He just knocks out Hawks and flees while harassed by the Flame Hero.
He never makes it anywhere close to Shigaraki. He manages to knock out Endeavor at the cost of many years… and then he runs into All Might.
Ancient evil who valued only quirks and wanted the world to fear him gets unceremoniously beaten to death by a quirkless old man as the whole world watches and regains its hope and faith in heroes.
Izuku and Bakugou fight Shigaraki. The battle is fierce. But as the final spark of Gearshift goes away, Shigaraki’s defenses are briefly shattered as the man staggers, dazed by the final blow.
The successor of the demon lord falls to a small syringe filled with Overhaul’s quirk erasing drug that Lemillion threw at Midoriya at just the right time.
One for All doesn’t have to be restored, for it was never lost in the first place.
The images - no, the memories - end and as Izuku is trying to recover his bearings, the Voice speaks again.
“This is what I offer.” It says. “Time is my domain. You will remember what used to be, but the world will not. Lives already lost will be returned. Your future will be yours to shape anew.”
Midnight, Star and Stripe and Crust would live. Eraserhead, Gran Torino and Endeavor wouldn’t be crippled. Toga, Twice and even Shigaraki would be arrested and given the help they all needed - while paying for their crimes. Izuku’s old dream of being the source of hope and a hero to the world despite lacking a quirk will come to fruition will never be fulfilled… but All Might’s would.
And he could still be a teacher - but like All Might rather than Eraserhead.
That was… almost too good.
“What’s the catch?” He asks.
“There’s none.” The Voice replies. “But it’ll be a grueling journey. Where there’s a hero, there’s a prophecy. When there’s prophecy, there’s fate. And when there’s fate, there is conflict. The land you need to save is filled with strife and those who seek to take advantage of it. While the evil you’ll be sent to conquer will be the greatest one of them all, it’ll hardly be the only one you’ll face. There’ll be many innocents you’ll fail to save. And if you fail, the world won’t be ruled by a man with evil in his heart and delusions of grandeur in his mind - it’ll end forever.”
It could be a dream. It should have been his first thought in fact. Or, perhaps, his brain finally snapped and this was his first step into his psychotic episode. But if it wasn’t…
When exactly did risks stop him from trying to help people? Did that ever happen?
“Yes.” Izuku replies. “Yes, I accept your…”
He never finished the sentence. Before he could do it, the endless expanse of nothingness vanished, replaced by another place.
He could see three tall rocks on a flat stone platform in front of him, clearly sculpted by human hand - and behind them, a massive lake surrounded by towering mountains, each of them at least partially covered in snow.
The air was chilly, but the clothes he was wearing were pretty thick and warm even if he had never seen them before. There was a hum of running water in the background, Izuku glancing to his right and seeing a river leaving the lake a short distance away.
![[Guardian Stones]](https://images.squidge.org/images/2025/01/06/1.-Guardian-Stones.jpeg){kind=link}
And then, he hears the voice he didn’t expect to hear anytime soon.
“D-Deku-kun?” He immediately turns around just for his eyes to shoot wide when he sees a small crowd of completely flabbergasted people staring back at him.
Uraraka and Kacchan were standing closest to him. Todoroki and Iida were standing right behind them. And this wasn’t all - at the end of the group was Hagakure, Hatsume and - to his utter shock somehow surpassing all the others combined - Himiko Toga.
All of them were wearing the same combination of tunic, pants and leather boots which looked like something straight out of European Middle Ages.
“Wha… what are you doing here?!” He stammers out. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but…”
“Why won’t you tell us, Deku?” Bakugou grumbles. “I heard a voice in my head telling me that you were taken to another world and asking me in a flowery language whether I’m ready to deal with nasty bullshit to help you. And then I was here.”
He was… suspiciously calm. Just one expletive in so many words, and not even a really strong one? No threats? Izuku didn’t even know that he could be like this! Wait, not the time for that.
“Wait.” Hagakure blinks at him, interrupting his soon-to-be answer. “This is real? Not a dream? I thought this was a dream!”
She’s visible, completely so in fact. And Izuku couldn’t feel the sparks of One for All. They were all quirkless, weren’t they? It was going to make things a whole lot harder.
“We need to talk it through and figure out what happened.” Izukud decides. “But before that… GRAB TOGA!”
Not very subtle, but she was clearly trying to sneak away while they were occupied, and he wasn’t letting that happen.
***
In the end, they did catch her and that’s despite Izuku’s shout startling everyone for a second. Especially Uraraka looked like she had seen a ghost - which, now that he thinks about it, was exactly what happened.
A moment later, Toga was standing between Hagakure and Todoroki, with a solid rocky wall behind her - and others before her. Instead of calming her down, this fact seemed to only make her more excited.
“Ochako-chan!” She grins, with zero apprehension about being captured. Then again, it had to be an improvement after being, you know, dead. “Did you miss me?”
“To my surprise, yes.” Uraraka replies before sighing loudly as Toga perks up at her words. “Ugh. Thank you for saving my life, even if you were the reason it was in danger in the first place. But if you harm innocent people, we’re back to square one, so take that into account. Deku-kun, you can begin.”
He clears his throat before speaking.
“Well, I was contacted by some disembodied voice which said that they want me to save another world, and that if I agree, it’ll be a long, grueling journey with great reward at the end.” Izuku replies. “And I said yes.”
“Please tell me it’s not to get your quirk back, Deku.” Bakugou says, once more suspiciously calm.
“Wha, no!” Izuku replies quickly. “I don’t like losing it, but I’m not accepting strange deals with unknown entities to get it back! That’s how you end up becoming a thrall to some All for One-wannabe. The reward is changing the past. It showed me a whole different timeline in question. We can go through it in details later, but to summarize the changes, Midnight, Sir Nighteye, Star and Stripe and Crust live, Toga and Twice are arrested and given proper help, Endeavor, Gran Torino and Aizawa-sensei aren’t crippled, I inject Shigaraki with a quirk destroying drug after me and Kacchan briefly incapacitate him and All for One gets beaten to death by All Might in front of the cameras, Oh, and Dabi’s reveal doesn’t make it past the heroes in front of him.”
There’s a few seconds of silence as everyone is mulling it over. It’s Iida who speaks first.
“That would be great.” He says. “Are you sure that it can really do that? Toga being alive can be a proof, but…”
“Would you say no without at least trying?” Izuku interrupts him with a question.
“... no, I wouldn’t.” Iida admits before looking down and away. “It asked me if I want to help you, but it also offered to make it so that my brother wasn’t crippled by Stain, and I never do the stupid thing I did in Hosu.”
Oh.
“Wait, you got different rewards?” Izuku shoots a look at the others. “What did it tell you?”
“I got none.” Bakugou replies before an angry frown blooms on his face. “Also, why the hell am I so calm?!”
Oh, so Izuku wasn’t the only one who noticed it.
“Well, I don’t feel the need to chop air with my hands.” Iida replies. “We… don’t have our quirks clearly enough, and it’s said that some of them can influence your behavior. Wait, Toga, do you have your bloodlust?”
“Huh?” She blinks at him. “Wait… hey! I don’t have it! That sucks, I liked it!” No one decides to address that last part.
“Alright, so I guess we have that confirmed.” Izuku decides to interrupt Bakugou’s journey through five stages of grief. “Uraraka-san?”
“They asked me to help you, and so I said yes.” Uraraka replies. It was… pleasant to hear, he has to admit. “They did tell me that we’ll all remember what we’ve done here, if that’s something new?”
“It is.” Izuku replies. “They told me that I would remember it, not we. Todoroki-kun?”
“I said that I don’t want to risk death in a foreign world, not to cause my family any further grief.” Todoroki replies and… yeah, seeing his family situation, making him vanish forever would be the final blow to everyone’s sanity. “It said that for as long as Midoriya-kun is alive, he can resurrect us for as long as he reaches a shrine of something called the Nine Divines. And if he is the one to die, we’ll go back to our world safely, but without any of our rewards except for memories of this whole adventure.”
“That’s somehow worse than if we all just stayed dead.” Midoriya replies with a worried frown. “I’d rather not go back home while knowing that my mistake led the entire world to ruin. On the other hand, it’s a relief, because I was seriously afraid that you’d get involved in it for my sake and then something would have happened to you.”
He’ll do his best to only think about the latter, not the former. For the sake of his own sanity.
“Because you’re a bit of a dumbass sometimes.” Uraraka sighs while doing her best to ignore the first half of his response as well. “We’re heroes, got it? We fought together in a literal war. We know the risks, and we’ve decided to be here.” Izuku smiles at her. “Hagakure-san?”
“Well…” She scratches the side of her head. “They didn’t mention helping you, just making All for One suffer some extra pain and humiliation. I guess I’m really petty after what he did to us all, and especially Aoyama-kun. They did tell me to follow the river once we arrived here, though.”
“That spares us one decision to make.” Izuku replies. The road passing by the stones was following the river downstream, while in the other direction it was heading up the mountain. “Hatsume-san?”
“Hmm?” She tilts her head a little. “Oh, right. Me. Well, I’ve gotten a really awesome deal! A fantasy world and all the fantasy materials and they’d replace my quirk with one allowing me to produce some of them at will! The more I achieve in this world, the more materials I’ll be able to make. If it’s even half as good as I hope it to be, I’ll become the greatest support engineer to have ever existed! The glory of the Hatsume Industries will…”
“Toga?” Izuku decides to interrupt her and get to the next person before she really gets off the ground.
“Wait, wait!” Hatsume ends up interrupting him in turn. “There’s more! They mentioned that we’ll receive starting equipment after we touch the stones over there! One for warriors, one for rogues and one for mages! That’s what they said.”
Izuku glances at the stones, he can definitely see a drawing of someone resembling a warrior on the nearest one. Okay, that checks out.
“Thank you, now Toga.” He says. “What did they tell you?”
“That if I’ll help you achieve your goal here, I’ll be alive! And both you and Ochako-chan will be visiting me in therapy.” Toga announces cheerfully, before tilting her head a little and giving him a quizzical look. “You two will visit me in therapy, right?”
Izuku and Uraraka exchange glances. In the end she’s the one to answer.
“Yes.” She says. “Yes, we will.”
“Oooh!” Toga blushes while holding both of her cheeks. “Two of you at once…! I’m not sure if my body can handle it, but I’ll do my best!” Silence in the group lasts for the next few seconds as Uraraka and Izuku rapidly turn red. But then she jerks up a little. “Err, this is so weird. There’s no blood in my fantasies! Ehh… you know what, I can work with that!”
Bakugou facepalms loudly while Hagakure giggles in the background. To his own horror, Izuku realizes that it was going to be a regular thing. Eugh. Didn’t he literally tell no to her ‘love confession’?
She tried to single-handedly obliterate half of Japan over his rejection! Why was she back to acting like that all of a sudden?!
“A-anyway.” Izuku clears his throat. “I know that I’m supposed to save the world with you helping me, but… Iida-kun, do you want to lead us?”
“No.” Iida surprises him by shaking his head. “First of all, you’re the one who is supposed to save the world, with us helping you. There is a large chance that you’ll have some strange powers that will make locals see you as the chosen one, and having you be seen as a follower of someone else might not be… marketable. Second of all, while I’m the class president and I believe that I did really well in that role, I’m aware enough to say that you were the one who made us keep going in the darkest moments.”
“Wha…” Izuku tries to stammer his answer, but that’s when Bakugou pitches in.
“No, he didn’t.” He snarls. “I should be the leader.”
Three seconds later Hagakure giggles in the background, Hatsume gives him a blank look, Toga glances at Hagakure before starting to giggle as well, Iida looks away without a word, while Uraraka speaks.
“Bakugou-kun, we fought in a war together so I’ll be frank.” She says. “In academics you’re better than everyone in our group, except for Iida-kun and… wait, Hatsume-san, what were your midterm ranks?”
“Number one for the Support Course, of course!” She smiles proudly at Uraraka.
“So, you’re the third smartest in the group.” Uraraka corrects herself. “You don’t score the first place there and you’re far worse at human interactions than literally everyone here save for Toga and Hatsume-san.”
Bakugou immediately starts fuming, but doesn’t get to shout at her before she continues.
“You did have a group that was looking up to you and were to you what most of us here are for Deku-kun.” She admits. “Meaning that you do have the same type of charisma, even if yours is a bit different. But none of those who followed you are here, while he has his entire group save for Tsuchan and maybe Mineta-kun. In fact, aside from Hagakure-san, everyone here is to some degree close to him, even if Hatsume-san is… a questionable case.”
Hatsume blinks at her, clearly confused as to why she was singled out like this, but Uraraka pays it no mind and continues.
“And if we were to talk with some potentially dangerous locals, I’m sure that even Kirishima-kun and Ashido-san would have picked Deku-kun over you for that job.” She says, with the slightly petty part of Izuku’s heart enjoying the scene, even if he and Bakugou were past their problems. ”In fact, I think that they’d pick anyone who isn’t you, Toga or Hatsume-san.”
Izuku, personally, would have left that job to Ashido-san if she was here, and Uraraka-san in her absence. Iida-kun was too stiff and serious about being orderly and lawful, Todoroki was doing much better than at the start of the school but he still came off as aloof from time to time, Hatsume-san was her usual self, Toga was even worse than that and Izuku was a bit too skittish - even if not in a dangerous situation.
That left Hagakure and Uraraka who tied for the position of being the most outspoken and friendly among them. He’d prioritize the latter too, because Hagakure was a bit too used to being invisible and her looks and facial gestures not being important for conversations.
“Can I be a Himi-chan to you?” Toga perks up. She is ignored.
It takes Bakugou about ten seconds to process his own emotions before he crosses his arms in front of him and speaks.
“Alright.” He grumbles. “Point taken. I’m still calling you out on any stupid decision you make.”
“Perfect.” Uraraka nods before looking back at Izuku. “Are you alright with that? It’s a lot of responsibility, and while I’m sure that you’ll be up to it…”
“Thank you for your consideration, but I don’t think that anything else is an option.” Izuku replies with an apologetic smile on his face. “You are here because of me. If I give up the responsibility for that and for your well-being, I’m pretty sure that Kirishima-kun would tell me that it wasn’t manly, and that’s a fate worse than death.”
Uraraka stifles her laughter, but Hagakure openly giggles one more time. Even Bakugou seems to calm down. He really has a soft spot for Kirishima, something that Izuku didn’t think was possible before he got into the UA. And then…
And then the world ends.
Izuku witnessed the sheer horror that Stain evoked in Hosu. The pure, undiluted feeling of dread caused by the man whose will remain unbroken despite his severe injuries, who even in this state made it clear with every fibre of his being that he wouldn’t stop - and if he wanted to, he would kill you.
He witnessed the existential horror of All for One exuded in Kamino. The feeling - strengthened by him knocking out the entire hero squad with a single attack and then toying around with Best Jeanist - that all your skills, all your strength and experience, none of this mattered. For if he wanted you to, you’d be dead.
He also witnessed the much more primal fear that Shigaraki caused by his sheer presence. You knew how powerful he was in Jaku - you knew how he easily engaged Endeavor and Ryukyu and so many other heroes, and the best they could do against him was to survive - and that’s after Eraserhead deprived him of his quirks. And now he was right in front of you and you knew at a glance that he would kill you with about enough emotions than you had to swatting a fly.
None of this came close to what he felt right now when that thing emerged from over the nearby forest and began to fly over them.
It was massive, with dark wings spread wide. It was a dragon - but not like Ryukyu. No, to compare her to the thing above it was the same thing as comparing one of the USJ thugs - or an unarmed police trainee - to All for One.
It wasn’t a dragon. It was so much more. It was a being of pure dread and horror. It was a thing that looked like a dragon but wasn’t. It didn’t look like a dragon - it was the dragons who looked like it.
A photo of it would have been more terrifying and more dragon than Ryukyu could ever be.
It doesn’t notice them. It’s too great for that. It’s to them what a human is to an ant. If it noticed them, it would squash them. If they happened to be too close to it, they would probably die of fright without it even bothering to do anything to them.
And it flies away, disappearing beyond the mountain range on the other side of the river.
Izuku was the only one among them who was still standing at this point, but it had more to do with his body going stiff enough that his knees didn’t give up. Instead, it’s three seconds later when the wave of relief floods his mind does he fall onto his butt while panting heavily.
Toga and Hatsume seemed to be unconscious. Todoroki was on his knees, his face almost touching the ground with his arms wrapped around his head, the man shivering visibly. Uraraka and Iida fell backward and were sitting on their butts, staring white-faced at where the thing used to be - he clearly hit the rock wall with the back of his head and there was a small trickle of blood on the side of his neck facing Izuku.
Bakugou and Hagakure were lying in the fetal position. Bakugou shivered slightly while Hagakure, on second look, seemed to have lost consciousness afterward.
She also seemed like she’d need a change of underwear. The same seemed to be a thing for Toga.
There was silence, interrupted only by Izuku’s loud and strained gasp. He seemed to be the closest to recovery, and seems to have dealt with that horror the best. Was that caused by whatever made him the supposed hero to save the world? He had no idea if there was someone making him special or…
It was at this moment that he realized that Hatsume wasn’t unconscious. She wasn’t breathing. And if he had any doubts about it, her body took that moment to vanish into thin air, leaving only her clothes behind. She… they could resurrect her at one of those shrines, right?
“A…” Uraraka manages to make a sound resembling speech as the first one. “Aaaaa… w-what was that t-thing?”
Izuku wishes that he would have an answer to that. But he has nothing. Was there even a word to describe it?
“I… I remembered something.” Bakugou mutters, before continuing in a weak, stuttering voice. “The guy who b-brought us here. He said that… the first thing that D-Deku is supposed to d-defeat… will be t-the first l-living thing-we’ll s-see in that w-world.”
Oh no.