Chapter Text
He woke up in an alleyway with a white disk clutched in his hand. Nagisa almost let his eyes snap open before he remembered to take stock of himself first. Don't let the potential enemy know you're awake.
Nothing felt broken and there were no new additions to the bruises he already had. The ground was cold and there was an unflattering smell coming from his right side a few feet behind him. A dumpster. He couldn't sense anyone nearby, so Nagisa settled for opening his eyes.
He last remembered going to sleep at home. Sleep had been rough the past couple months after the loss of Koro-sensei and everyone having to prepare for the next school year at different high schools. And he had nights like the others where they would end up back in their old classroom staring at the blackboard.
But he hasn't had a night so far where he woke up in an unknown part of the city with only the clothes on his back and a disk in his hand.
Wait-
Nagisa looked at the device in his hand that he knew he didn't have before he woke up. It was white and smooth with a little push button on top. Deciding to take the risk he pushed it.
A little hologram popped up with what looked like a home screen. There were three icons: camera, gallery, and search. He pulled up the gallery first and on it was- …. oh.
The yearbook Koro-sensei made for everyone. It looked like all the pictures were there. Nagisa felt the tears come up and quickly shut the app. He would look at it later. There was nothing special about the camera feature, but the search was different.
Clicking on it revealed a glitching Ritsu.
She glanced around her new surroundings with confusion. “Nagisa? What's going on? Why is the connection so bad? It's hard to get through, the servers are weird.” Not everything Ritsu said came out clear but he could get the gist of what she was trying to say.
“Ritsu I woke up somewhere unfamiliar, think you can help out?” If she couldn’t then Nagisa was a little screwed.
“Of course, one moment.” She sent him what should have been a reassuring smile, but all Nagisa felt was confusion.
No matter the place, Ritsu had little trouble coming through the network. So now that he's in some unknown area and above ground yet the connection was so unstable, this wasn't looking good.
“You’re currently in Musutafu, Japan. The outskirts of it are within the Shizuoka Prefecture.”
“But I’ve never heard of Musutafu city.”
“Me neither, which doesn’t make any sense, but here it says it exists.” Ritsu pulls up tabs on a city called Musutafu with pictures as proof. She kept scrolling through more articles and databases before stopping short with a realization. “What? But that's impossible!”
“Ritsu?”
“Nagisa, not only are you in a city that isn’t real but you're also not in the right time. I can't find an error in the system, but it says the year is 23XX. And there's this thing, quirks?” Ritsu grows distracted with all the new information. “That started a little over two hundred years ago. Imagine Koro-sensei being able to walk around in broad daylight in crowded areas and look normal. It's-”
Ritsu was still talking but Nagisa had stopped listening. The year is wrong, hundreds of years wrong. And as he saw images flash on screen courtesy of Ritsu, of how the world looks now, it all screamed wrong. Because if the year was right then that meant everyone was gone and Nagisa was alone.
“Ritsu.”
“It looks really cool- yes?” Ritsu closed all the tabs open and held her hands out, wanting to touch but not having the body to do so. “Nagisa, I need you to breathe. I'm sorry for rambling and not noticing sooner but you need to breathe.”
“Was I ever given a missing person's report?”
Ritsu turned away for a moment before coming back. “…. No. Actually, it looks like you don't exist on record, no one from class 3-E does. Not our teachers either, and the moon never exploded.”
That left him with more confusion, but he was quickly coming out of his panic. Because even if no one is on paper and could just be a system mistake. The moon exploding would be a big deal no matter how much history moved forward. He had a theory but.
“Ritsu, have the others ever told you about this one-story trope, dimension travel?”
“Yes. You think this is what it is? But wouldn't you have to have died?”
“Not necessarily. That's more like reincarnation or isekai tropes. Dimension travel could just be an accident. If no one exists in this place and we're in a different timeline completely, then that's the explanation I'm sticking with. I just don't know what caused it.” As Nagisa spoke he got up from the ground and faded into the darkness the alleyway provided just in case.
Ritsu thought it over before agreeing. “I can still communicate with what we'll call your original dimension. You were at home last, yes? I'll ask Mr. Karasuma to check in and explain the situation.” Within the next couple minutes Ritsu sent off the message and got herself established within this world's new system. If Nagisa was alone, then as his friend she wasn't going to leave him stranded.
She would stabilize herself and remake Nagisa's identity, give him an income and get him somewhere safe to live in for the duration of his stay. She also looked up places that could hold information about dimension travel or anything similar.
“Nagisa, what do you wish to be listed as? Quirkless or not.”
“Quirk? Is that what you were talking about earlier?”
“Yes. You can think of quirks like a superpower or a physical mutation. Koro-sensei's appearance would fit in even with the quirk discrimination mutant quirks receive. About 80% of the planet's human population has quirks. The 20% of quirkless people are typically looked down upon by the rest of society.”
“Seriously, even with all the time that has passed? Discrimination for having a certain type of quirk but looked down on if you have nothing. But on the other hand, two hundred years isn’t much time at all; it's expected that a chunk of society would still be ordinary.” Nagisa looked at the map Ritsu displayed on screen as a temporary home until the paperwork could be finalized on her end and received by a living person. He started to make his way over, sticking to the dark and going unnoticed by anyone still out in the middle of the night.
“There are medical ways to check if someone has a quirk or not. If they have two joints in their pinky toe, then they are quirkless.” They both snorted at that. “So, quirks are categorized in four ways.”
Ritsu talked the whole way to the temporary home, which was an abandoned office workplace. Recently abandoned in the past couple years. Nagisa learned all about quirks in today's age, along with the concept of heroes and villains. Which was stupidly taught as black and white in school systems. Villains bad and heroes good with no understanding or distinction in between.
There were hero schools, aka child soldier schools that encouraged children's dreams of becoming like their favorite hero, and the hero commission which blatantly stated they groomed young children into being heroes. And there were a couple hidden folders of heroes that had killed villains, were given permission ‘orders’, then thrown into prison when they were discovered. The hero commission took no blame of course.
“I think the best course of action would be to enroll into a hero school, UA being first on that list which leads me back to that one question. Quirkless or not?” Ritsu could get him enrolled to take the tests of any school, but he would need to complete his file first.
Nagisa didn't need to think about it. “Quirkless. No need to pretend to have something I don't. And UA will have good resources. If you could, what's the underground like?” Nagisa quickly explained himself at Ritsu's look of panic at the mention of ‘underground’. “Just in case the schools don't have what I need then the underground is the next best bet, I want to avoid the hero commission at all costs.”
Ritsu studied him, then sighed as she knew there was no talking him out of it. “There are different villain organizations of course and a few notable names that hold various connections. Though I am advising you to try school first and dangerous people later.” Ritsu finished with a pointed glare. She completed the paperwork of Nagisa's identity and got the rest ready for when he would move into a small apartment. “I listed your mother as your sole guardian that works overseas. I can also disguise myself as her if the need ever comes up.”
“Okay, thank you Ritsu.” They both gave each other a smile. “I'll leave the dangerous stuff alone for now and focus on studying and training.”
“You also need to be careful.”
“Hm?”
“You would be the first quirkless hero student in UA history. There are of course heroes who don't have battle related quirks and are successful, but you would be facing a lot of ridicule and be constantly looked down on.”
“That's nothing new, Ritsu. We were all class 3-E remember? Our schools rejects.”
“I know. And I know you can handle it.” Ritsu looked like she wanted to say more but held herself back.
“Ritsu.” She met his eyes with hers. “Thank you for all the help, I mean it.”
It was more than just tonight, and integrating him into this society, they both knew that.
“I'm going to sleep for the night, call you tomorrow?”
“Whenever you need me.” Ritsu signed off.
Nagisa shut off the device. He found a relatively clean couch to sleep on in a room with only a door as entry, no windows. He would be fine.
Ritsu was a load of help and despite the lack of everyone else, his whole world, he had the pictures to remind himself of what he was working for.
Tomorrow he would go to whatever place Ritsu had bought for him to stay in, he would make plans, get used to this reality.
He would be fine; he would have to be.
---
When Tadaomi woke up to an emergency message he wasn't expecting the information that came with it.
One of the kids, Nagisa, somehow went missing from his home and ended up in an alternative dimension with superpowers. Of all the weird shit that's happened in the past year, why not dimension travel?
“Fuck.” He got out of bed and opened his closet. The bed rustled when Irina pushed herself up and looked at him.
“What's wrong?”
He tossed her the phone and got to work on pulling his suit on and grabbing his keys.
“Well shit.” Irina rushed to get dressed too.
“Start calling the other kids, see what they know.” He started the car and Irina shoved herself in just as he started to pull onto the road.
There was no luck with the other kids, and now all of them were in a panic and threatening to storm the house only to be told to wait.
The Shiota household looked normal, no sign of forced entry but it was also empty. There was a crumpled note from Nagisa's mother that stated she was on a business trip and wouldn't be back till the end of the week.
The only odd thing from the surface level searching was the fact that Nagisa's bed sheets had been ripped off the bed and were halfway out of the room into the hall. No valuables were taken, there was no blood and besides the bed sheets there was no struggle.
“If it is dimension travel, we'll have to get the government involved.” Tadaomi said reluctantly.
“Maybe not!” Chirped a voice from the phone still in Irina's hand.
“Ritsu, what do you have for us?” Irina held the phone up for them to see.
“I am able to make the connection from our world to the one Nagisa is trapped in. He's safe right now and we've made plans on what to do next. Keep this in the dark for as long as you can sir!”
“I understand the kids are resourceful and you can help, but we can't let just you two to fix this.”
“Well, that world has progressed more technology wise. There may be someone here with the power to send Nagisa back. Although...” Ritsu paused. “It would be good to know what happened on our end, but you know how dangerous it would be to involve the government.”
The couple looked at each other, communicating silently on what they should do. Keeping the government out has its pros and cons but the longer it's hidden and eventually discovered, the consequences wouldn't be pretty.
“Fine.” He answered Ritsu. “You have the rest of the week at the very least. Well, make up something when the time comes. Get the kids in a group chat and advise them to stay out of trouble.”
“Right away!” Ritsu hung up.
“This is gonna be a pain. I'll start looking through my connections.” Irina handed him back his phone and went back to the car.
This was just the beginning. But Tadaomi knew this was going to be a long and stressful situation.