Chapter 49

.::Requiem for a Dream::

It happened around a month ago.

It had been one of the truly good days of autumn. The breeze had been brisk but free of the bitter edge from winter, the sky not a perfect clear blue, but not overly cloudy either. It was the kind of weather Mezou loved, the air feeling oddly crisp compared to all the other seasons. Autumn might be the time when the leaves began to die, but he found the growing chill refreshing compared to spring.

As the afternoon drew on he threw on his poncho-style coat to cover his arms and slipped out of the base. No one had tried to stop him or insist he take another person, knowing just how much he needed the alone time after spending most of the summer hidden away. His arms drew too much attention to walk around with them uncovered after all, and the poncho was too thick to wear in the boiling heat of summer.

Now though he got no odd looks for wearing it, easily fading into the masses as he walked towards one of his favorite parks. Not many people bothered going there on weekdays, not with the sky getting dark earlier every day—but more than that, he loved the colors. Red and orange occupied the trees and ground as far as the eye could see, the changing leaves making it even more colorful than spring.

Sunset crept ever closer as he walked through the park and tinted the air gold, further accentuating the warm colors of autumn. Mezou took his time to enjoy the scenery as he walked deeper into the park, heading for his favorite spot: a plaza built around bronze statue of a man accompanied by a small child with a bright smile. As it came into sight his eyes focused not on the statue though, but the maple trees planted around it.

Those maple trees was the reason he loved this spot. While most of the other trees in the park turned red and orange and gold, these turned a deep shade of red that looked closer to violet and violet. It stood out, even the fallen leaves that littered the ground still looking rich and fresh.

Because of that awe, it took him a moment to notice the man already in the plaza.

Mezou was instantly on edge at realizing he was alone with the stranger, mentally analyzing the man for signs of danger. He faced partially away from Mezou so he could only see one side of the man's body, his attention focused on the statue with his hands casually stuffed in the pockets of his coat. From what Mezou could see of his face he had distinctly foreign features, with short light brown hair partially shaved on one side by his ear which had several piercings.

Plain and unassuming, no visual tells of what his Quirk might be. Those were the most dangerous kind of all, because Mezou had no idea what to expect.

Mezou stood still for a moment, silently debating if he should just leave. In that time the man's eyes slid over to him, a slightly darker shade of brown than his hair. Some emotion flickered in them, too briefly to catch and identify it before they seemed to settle and a casual smile spread across his face. "Hey," he greeted in English, and then switched to perfectly unaccented Japanese. "Nice weather, isn't it?"

"...It is," Mezou allowed, wary of the stranger. The man hummed, turning back to the statue.

"Sorry if this seems random, but any idea who this guy is?"

"No clue." The statue lacked a plaque, and the bronze made it harder to pick out truly identifying features. The man hummed, pulling his hands out of his pocket to reveal a small notebook and pen.

"Shame. This isn't the first time I've seen this one, but there's never anyone around who I can ask. It's not critical or anything, but I was curious since usually there's one of Saigo Takamori here instead." The name caught Mezou's attention, recognizing it from history classes—or maybe from one of the other runaways, who was obsessed with samurai—as one of the Three Great Nobles of the Restoration, and the so-called "last true samurai."

Though Mezou couldn't really pick out Saigo from a line of pictures, he felt it safe to say this statue didn't depict him. The man wore much more modern clothing, and had obvious signs of a Quirk in the form of a thin tail which curled around the smiling child's far ankle. "When was it replaced?" he asked, and the man shrugged, writing something in his notebook.

"No clue. I only found out when I found a note about it about a year ago. It's one of the smaller ones so it's not a priority, but it's still an interesting mystery." He spoke lightly and casually, his voice tinged with amusement, but Mezou found himself stiffening once more.

"Smaller ones?" he repeated. The man's pencil paused in its writing, and he glanced over with a thoughtful glint in his eye before smiling.

"Don't worry about it, it's just something I do to entertain myself." He turned back to his notes and Mezou remained silent, gaze now focused on the notebook.

Logically, Mezou knew he should probably leave. He shouldn't engage a total stranger in conversation while alone, especially an obvious foreigner with no noticeable accent. Tourists never stayed long enough to lose their accents, so this man was either very good at Japanese, had a natural knack for picking up local accents, or he lived here. Any of those scenarios spoke of potential danger.

Yet even so, he found himself rooted to the spot, eyes trained on the notebook. Mezou might be rational and cautious, but he was still a teenager. Teenagers had a tendency to be curious even when they knew something was dangerous. And as he stared at the foreign man with no accent who wrote in a notebook about a statue that neither of them knew—well, he was no exception to that rule.

The pencil paused its motions again, the man's gaze sliding over to him once more. The corners of his mouth twitched upwards, a sly glint in his eye. "Curious?" he asked, and even though Mezou shouldn't respond, should just drop it and leave, he found himself nodding. The man hummed as he turned back to the notebook, scribbling once more. Then his smile grew larger, suddenly sharp and full of teeth as he grinned down at the notebook. "Know what? Screw it."

Mezou tensed at the abrupt shift to English, not knowing what the man said but instantly wary nonetheless. The man finished whatever he was writing before turning to face him more fully, his smile not quite as sharp but his eyes still glinting with mischief. "What the heck? Usually I don't talk about this, but this world's fucked up, I have no idea where any of my siblings are, and I'm not planning to stay long enough to find out."

"Long enough to find out what?" Mezou asked, already backing away. If he ran now, he could probably get away—

"Tell me, kid," the man said, making him freeze. "Do you believe in multiverse theory?"

Holy shit.

Just—holy shit.

Eijirou already understood some of the reasons why Anjou believed Ashido's whole "other dimension" story might be true, and why he hadn't dismissed it completely either. While he still thought it sounded absolutely insane and could be some sort of trap or trick, after what she'd said, he thought he'd been prepared to accept it if it did turn out to be true.

But to actually meet someone else who had the same memories as Ashido though? Someone else who recognized her from those memories, and him too?

More than that—for it to be Todoroki Shouto, the son of Endeavor?

This had officially skipped out of conspiracy theory territory into something real.

All at once the gravity of the situation hit him. Up until now, part of him had still been able to deny just how serious and potentially dangerous the situation was. But now that he was faced with the missing son of Endeavor? Suddenly, the stakes had gotten a lot higher than when it was just Ashido. This wasn't some random kid with a powerful Quirk villains might want, this was the missing son of Endeavor!

Either these memories were real, or this was a conspiracy of a more epic scale than he ever would have dreamed of.

And now, a third person showed up talking about this mythical Class 1-A. Someone who didn't claim to come from that world like Ashido and Todoroki, but to have seen it in a dream of all things thanks to some random dude's Quirk. And as Eijirou listened to him describe it (after a round of proper introductions, since they now had three more people suddenly participating), for some reason it didn't sound absolutely insane.

Shouji Mezou, as he introduced himself, had to be one of the most terrifying teenagers Eijirou had ever seen. He looked bigger than all of them, with silver hair and a fabric mask over his overly-elongated face so you could only see his eyes. He also had six arms, three on each side connected by some sort of membrane. Only two arms had actual hands, the rest ending in stumps. One of those stumps had a fleshy tendril extending from it with a mouth.

That's what he used to talk, and Eijirou had to try not to stare too hard at it as Shouji described the dream.

"It started near the end of the day," he began. "It seemed to be a pretty normal lecture that was already wrapping up, people were just asking questions by the time it started. I sat in the front row between Ojiro," he nodded at the blond, "and a girl who was invisible."

"If she was invisible, how'd you know it was girl?" One of the other newcomers spoke up, a guy who'd introduced himself as Mime. Surprisingly Ashido and Todoroki had both ID'd him as someone from Class 1-B. They didn't remember his name though, so he'd decided to just use his codename, just like Akai and the other guy who'd followed Shouji, a guy with pointed ears called Rogue.

"The girl's uniform has a skirt," Shouji replied flatly, and Mime looked a bit sheepish while he continued. "The teacher called on two classmates before the bell rang. One was Asui," he nodded at the frog girl, "And the other was a girl named Yaoyorozu. The bell rang after he answered her question so he dismissed us. I got a look at the rest of the class while we were leaving. There were a lot of people, so I don't clearly remember all of them, but Rockfish was also there—"

"Kouda," Todoroki added to Ashido, who nodded in recognition, as did Shouji.

"Right. I also saw that blond actor who has that movie out right now."

"Aoyama Yuga?" Asui supplied helpfully, and Eijirou and Ashido both startled.

"Aoyama Yuga's in your class!?" he yelped in shock, at the same time Ashido blurted, "Aoyama's a movie star here!?"

"Yeah, that one's still hilarious," Anjou snickered, shaking her head. "Anyways, keep going Shouji." He nodded, and so did the part of his arm that had the mouth much to Eijirou's discomfort before he continued.

"I also remember seeing Ashido and Todoroki since they stood out. Todoroki still had that scar, but his hair was split in two colors, not solid black." Todoroki's hand reached for his scar as he listened, a small frown on his face. "I remember... Jirou, I assume, because she was seated directly behind me and was talking to a blond kid next to her. And I also remember you." His attention focused on Eijirou as he spoke, making him stiffen. "You were sitting next to Asui, which is the only reason I really remember you. We never actually spoke directly."

"Then what?" Ashido pressed eagerly. "What happened after that?"

"Rockfish came to talk to me along with a boy with a crow or raven head—I assume that's Tokoyami," he added with a wry glance at Todoroki, who just nodded in confirmation before he continued. "We talked a bit about training while we left the classroom. When we walked out we heard a commotion down the hall, and saw a blond man who looked like a skeleton chasing after a robot with a mop."

Wait, what? "Uh, what?" Ojiro asked, sounding just as lost as Eijirou felt. Ashido however gasped, her entire face lighting up with delight.

"The janitor bot!" she nearly screeched, turning to tug at Todoroki's arm. "That was the day that one janitor robot went haywire! It stole All Might's tie, remember? And he was totally begging Iida to help catch it!"

Everyone startled at that, eyes bulging at the casual reference to All Might of all people. Todoroki just nodded, saying, "He said he'd been chasing it around the school for half an hour when he asked Iida to help."

"Wait, back up, did you say ALL MIGHT!?" Akai yelped, looking understandably stunned because people just did not casually reference All Might.

"I... didn't see All Might," Shouji said slowly. "But if Iida's the guy with blue hair and glasses, then I remember the skeleton man saying that to him. But, that wasn't..."

"That was All Might!" Ashido replied, spinning to face them all with a grin. "I told you—oops, I guess I told them, not you," she corrected herself mid-sentence sheepishly, gesturing at Eijirou and Anjou before continuing, "But anyways, he lost his powers fighting a really bad villain a few months ago so now he's just a skeleton all the time! Oh, and he works at UA, too." No one bothered responding, all of them just gawking at her.

Slowly they all turned to look at Todoroki, who simply nodded. "It's true. Endeavor was mad because he never got to beat him for the title Number One Hero."

"...Holy shit," Mime whispered, face understandably pale as everyone just... processed it.

...You know, of all the bombshells Ashido dropped on them, Eijirou had honestly forgotten about that one. The whole "All Might is still alive but a skeleton man now" thing had just been so outrageous, he'd honestly kinda glossed over it. Hearing it from Todoroki though made it a bit harder to ignore.

"...Well, it waxed the floor while it moved so Iida ended up slipping while trying to catch it," Shouji said after several long seconds. "A bunch of us started chasing it down the halls after that, and I ended up being the one to catch it instead. That's where the dream ended." A brief silence descended after he finished, everyone glancing at each other as they absorbed it.

Honestly, aside from the surprise cameo from All Might of all people, the dream sounded... pretty anti-climatic. Eijirou didn't know if he should be disappointed or what. It didn't seem all that special given it was supposedly a memory of another dimension.

"Okay," Akai said after a few seconds. "I guess I can kinda see why you'd ask Anjou to look into it some more, but... What made you think it wasn't just, you know, a dream?"

"Because I never saw UA's uniforms until I looked it up the next day," Shouji responded promptly. "I might have seen them at some point and just couldn't remember it, but it's still odd that I'd remember them so accurately. In the dream I had a modified version that had no sleeves and was closer to a vest, and I know for a fact I'd never seen a version like that. I had to specifically look up sleeveless variants to find one picture." Weird logic, but hard to argue with that.

"Which is where I come in," Anjou said. "Don't blame you guys for doubting him. I probably would have written it off as a dream too if it wasn't for one detail."

"Which was?" Monoma pressed, gaze sharp, and she nodded at Ashido.

"He described Ashido perfectly. I know for a fact they've never met. Ashido's from the Chiba prefecture, Shouji's from Fukuoka." Eijirou's eyes bulged at that bit of information. Fukuoka prefecture was in the Kyushu region—it was on a totally separate island. It was kinda crazy he'd come to Odawara all on his own. "The furthest Shouji's ever traveled was to Tokyo, twice in his whole life. He never went near Ashido's city. I even asked her if she'd ever been to Kyushu or even Okinawa, but she hadn't."

"Is there any chance villains would have an interest in Ashido?" Rogue piped up now, startling Eijirou. This was the first time the older teen had spoken since introducing himself, and he looked at Anjou with a critical gaze. "I'm not trying to outright doubt all this. But we can't overlook the possibility that she's a potential target."

"I did consider it," Anjou admitted nonchalantly. "But honestly, up until last Friday Ashido didn't really do anything to draw attention other than break dancing. Most people at school honestly thought her Quirk had to do with making her extra hyper."

"Hold on, what happened last Friday?" Mime asked curiously.

Ashido brightened and opened her mouth to respond, but Anjou cut her off. "That isn't really important right now, we can explain later. The point is, I couldn't see anyone being interested in Ashido beyond her sticking out with the mutation aspects. Either way, it was enough to at least get me interested and look into the rest of it, and the more I looked, the more people I found."

Already the gears were turning in Eijirou's head. "You said you were looking into Jirou for him, so you found her then, right?" he asked, and she nodded. "Then... You also mentioned Yaoyorozu and Ingenium's brother were in Hosu, and Shouji just mentioned Yaoyorozu too."

"Still never did find out her given name," Anjou mused lightly. "But yeah, that's what got me looking at Hosu in the first place. He didn't have a name for Iida, but he mentioned the guy was super-fast with engines in his legs, and that reminded me a bit of Ingenium who's based out of there. I went through some of his old interviews, and that's when I found out Ingenium has a little brother in our age bracket."

"Everything just kept lining up, huh," Ojiro murmured to himself with a frown. "I won't lie, it still sounds crazy, but I can see why you didn't just write it off." Anjou pressed her lips into a tight line, folding her arms over her chest.

"...To be honest, I still had some doubts," she admitted after a few seconds, surprising Eijirou. "Even with all those people, it's still all pretty circumstantial. None of it was really concrete evidence. But then, after talking to Ashido on Tuesday..." She trailed off, chuckling lowly and shaking her head. Eijirou felt a chill run down his spine; that was definitely ominous. "There was one thing she said that really sold me. A single detail that matched up with the dreams that no one would know."

"Which was?" Monoma asked, and Anjou met his gaze coolly, her eyes spinning and flickering with her Quirk.

"He described one classmate with some kind of hardening Quirk," she began, and Eijirou froze. "Red eyes, pointed teeth. Said he hardened his skin when he slipped while chasing that robot. Kept talking about manliness, and hung off some guy that cursed like sailor." As she spoke Todoroki and Ashido turned to look at him, recognizing the description while Eijirou felt an overwhelming numbness.

"Me?" he whispered, making the others turn to look at him too. Anjou gave a single nod.

"That's what I thought at first, but there was one detail that didn't add up," she said, looking him dead in the eye. "The kid he saw had red hair, not black."

The breath felt like it'd been knocked out of him, his whole body going numb as Ashido's words from back then earlier rang through his head. "You dyed it red when we got into UA as a promise you're a manly man!"

No. No way. No freaking way.

"And that's what's so weird," Anjou continued, not moving her eyes from his. "Why would someone go to all the trouble of inserting all these real people into fake memories, people who neither of them have probably ever met, and make sure all these little details are correct—and then change one person's hair randomly to be red instead of black?"

She shook her head and answered her own question. "It's too weird and specific. With these kinds of things, the more details there are, the easier it is for people to pick it apart and find holes. It's already a pretty big and elaborate story. Adding something that small is completely unnecessary, even if you add some kind of backstory for it. So these two are either telling the truth, or this is the most ridiculous and elaborate conspiracy ever."

Silence followed this. Eijirou didn't know how the others were taking it, but for him it really was just mind-numbing. He remembered that Anjou had looked at her back then as if she'd wanted to say something, but... For it to be because he was a living, walking clue? For him to be the detail that made up her mind?

Holy shit.

Shouto listened as Anjou laid out her reasoning in silence for the most part, just quietly processing it. He did have a lot of information dumped on him suddenly after all; the fact that Kirishima had dyed his hair in their dimension and not this one was honestly pretty minor compared to everything else. His gaze kept trailing back to Shouji, who nodded along as Ashido and Monoma helpfully explained how Kirishima had only dyed his hair that morning to the rest.

Shouji had only described that man he'd met briefly. A foreigner with brown hair and eyes, no noticeable accent, and who never gave him a name. Shouji said after asking about the multiverse, the man had offered to use his Quirk on him to show him another world. Something about how he knew Shouji was at UA in other worlds, and likely would have been there if it still existed in this one. He hadn't asked anything in return, simply claimed he was bored and wanted to scope another world.

Right now, that unknown man was their first real, solid lead at getting home. A Quirk that let him show people dreams of other realities? And more than that, the way Shouji described it made it sound like this man wasn't from this world, which meant he must be able to travel between them freely.

Just thinking about it made Shouto feel a buzz of anticipation deep inside himself. He didn't know if that man was the culprit responsible for how they got here or had any other connection to their situation, but it didn't matter. If he had a Quirk that let him access the multiverse, even if he wasn't responsible, he'd surely at least know something that could help them. He could tell Ashido had the same thought, her own eyes laser-focused on Shouji with even more intensity than him.

"That said, I found some other interesting stuff when I looked up the rest of the people Ashido mentioned," Anjou commented, drawing back everyone's attention. Her smirk had faded, her expression more serious now. "Did you know Bakugou Katsuki went missing on November 9th?"

That had all of them tensing, Shouto and Ashido both nearly recoiling since they knew him personally. Shouto and Bakugou had become decent friends over the course of their time in remedial license training, and Ashido was obviously already close to him. So to hear this world's Bakugou had disappeared, most likely kidnapped by villains given the state of the world... That was bad, very bad.

"I woke up here on November 14th," he said after a few moments, and Ashido bobbed her head with a frown.

"Yeah, me too."

"I doubt it's connected, but if he did get caught up in this, we probably won't be able to find out anytime soon," Anjou remarked. "The other one to note is Midoriya Izuku." And now Shouto grew even stiffer. Midoriya? Flashes of the green-haired boy filled his mind, some having him smiling brightly, and others standing with his arm dangling uselessly at his side while his voice echoed that it was his power.

Shouto swallowed harshly, forcing the last image from his mind as his hands clenched at his sides. "What happened to him?" he asked tightly, and Anjou glanced at them for a moment before speaking.

"Midoriya Izuku's parents died when he was eight in Flight 174." That hit Shouto like a rock, his eyes widening in disbelief. Memories of Midoriya's mother instantly flickered in his head. He'd only met her once, at the hospital after the ill-fated summer camp, but she had seemed so kind and cheerful, and Midoriya only had good things to say about her. For her to die left his stomach churning for his friend even before Anjou continued. "And then a few months after that, he disappeared completely. No one knows where he is, the investigation went cold."

And just like that Shouto's mind went blank, an icy chill crashing over him. Midoriya was missing?

His mind kicked into gear a moment later, racing at record speeds and reaching the worst conclusions possible. Shouto knew Midoriya had some connection to All Might, even if he claimed he wasn't his love child. If All Might died in that big battle before the crash, and afterwards, someone with a grudge against All Might found out about that mysterious connection...

Then there would be no one left to protect Midoriya.

"There's one other thing," Anjou said before his thoughts could spiral further. "Midoriya Izuku was Quirkless."

And now, Shouto's brain really did shut down, no longer able to process anything. What? Midoriya was Quirkless?

"What?" Ashido gasped next to him. "But—no, no way, that doesn't make any sense! He wasn't Quirkless!" She stubbornly shook her head. "He has some kind of, of super strength or something! Right, Todoroki?" She whirled to face him for backup, and Shouto could only numbly nod before she spun back to continue vehemently, "It kept breaking his bones and everything! It even had these sparks sometimes!"

"I don't know what to tell you," Anjou said with a shrug. "I only know that all the articles called him Quirkless. That's probably why the case went cold." Her voice held a particularly bitter note that made Shouto's eyebrows furrow. Somehow, her tone felt like she found that detail oddly personal. A glance Ashido and Kirishima showed them both looking equally grim, so they must know something he didn't. "In any case, I can't say for sure if he's alive or not. But the fact you guys both have memories of him specifically is definitely weird."

No one spoke for a few moments, just thinking it over. "So... what does that mean?" Asui finally asked.

"I have no idea," Anjou replied bluntly. "It's just something I found worth noting. That said, I couldn't find anyone else Ashido mentioned though, but we can't eliminate the possibility that you guys aren't the only ones here. The way I see it, our first step is to see if we can find anyone else from your class who's in this mess to see if they might have any ideas how it happened. So if you guys can make a full list, complete with any information you remember like names, Quirks, where they lived before, middle schools, that'd be a good start."

"What about the man Shouji mentioned?" Shouto piped up, finally voicing the thought that had been haunting him this whole time.

"That's priority number two," Anjou declared. "Finding him would be ideal, but let's be realistic. We don't know where he is, what his name is, and Shouji can't show us what he looks like, either. It's probably not going to happen that easily. Your classmates are more tangible sources we can actually investigate and locate." Shouto nodded in understanding, accepting her reasoning as reasonable enough even if he didn't like it.

After that the room lapsed into silence once more, everyone taking their time to mull over everything they'd just learned. "...Guys, this is really big," Kirishima said after a few seconds passed. "Maybe..." He bit his lip, and shook his head before pushing on. "Look, I get that you guys are runaways and can't let yourselves get found, but maybe—maybe we should go to some Pro Heroes with this."

The reaction was instantaneous. Nearly every runaway leaped to their feet, shouting loud refusals and objections and overall voicing their disapproval. Kirishima winced and shrunk back with wide eyes under the sudden outburst of angry voices directed at him, and Shouto felt a pang of pity for him. The shouting continued for nearly a full minute, the voices overlapping into an incoherent cacophony of noise, before one rose above the rest. "ENOUGH!"

Immediately all of them silenced and turned to face the other person Shouto didn't recognize whatsoever, the boy called Rogue. He seemed slightly older than them and more mature, and the fact everyone went silent at his command seemed to suggest a degree of respect. He surveyed the room silently for a few seconds before speaking. "I don't like the idea of risking contact with the Pros either, but Kirishima's got a point. This is big, probably more than we can handle."

Everyone began to bristle, clearly ready to object, but fell still when he held up a hand. "I'm not saying we should go to them now. Honestly, I'd rather not get involved in this at all," he added with a shrug. "This whole mess reeks of danger. But the fact these memories involve so many of you guys makes this too shady for me to ignore, even if it would only be Parasyte, and Todoroki and Ashido never showed up. I think we all want the truth, right?" The runaways all exchanged silent looks before turning back with wary nods, and Asui stepped forward.

"We can't ignore this," she declared bluntly. "We might not be heroes, but most of us here still want to be and do our best to help, even if it's not legal, kero. Even if we weren't in those memories, we can't ignore people in need."

"If there's a world where so many of us were able to go to UA, we need to find out about it," Ojiro added, looking resolute and determined. "And I want to know how much of that knowledge can be applied here." The others nodded in agreement, minds clearly settled, and Monoma crossed his arms.

"What's the plan, Rogue?" he asked, all business.

"We'll investigate this as long as we can," Rogue responded briskly. "See if we can find either more of these guys' classmates, or that guy Parasyte met. If we talk to more people who remember that world, we might be able to find some pattern to it, like Nettmegg said. But chances are, we won't," he added gravely. "This is big. Whether there's actually another world or this is just some crazy convoluted trap, either way, this is bigger than anything any of us have ever dealt with. So after a point, we'll most likely need to turn this over to Pro Heroes so they can handle it—"

"No." The sudden interruption surprised everyone, and all of them turned to Shouto. He didn't flinch under the scrutiny, his voice level and calm as he spoke with steely determination. "We can't turn this over to the Pro Heroes."

"Yuki, be realistic," Rogue said sharply. "This eventually will get outside our scope. Talking to Pros will be risky, so we'll put it off as long as possible, but they have resources we'll never have—"

"We can't," Shouto interrupted, meeting his gaze squarely. "If we go to them, they'll probably take us into custody, and that means when this is over, this world's version of me will be forced to go back to Endeavor."

His words seemed to have the effect he desired, all fight vanishing from the older teen's face and replaced by a look of shock and surprise. The others were similarly quiet and stunned, and Shouto used the opportunity to voice his thoughts, pulling out his eyepatch from his pocket as he did. "I've said this before, but when I woke up here I had all the components for a disguise on my body and even dyed my hair. I don't know why my counterpart ran away, but knowing how Endeavor was in my world..."

He trailed off there, eyes narrow as he squeezed his fist around the eyepatch. "The fact I ran away and left my siblings behind must mean I was desperate in this world. I know it must be because of that man's actions. If he learns I've been found, he'll probably grab me and take me back before anyone else can help. And even if he doesn't do that, and lets them help me and fix the situation, he'll probably demand custody of me immediately after everything's solved. And I can't do that," he said, hissing the words out. "I can't let my other self get trapped with that man—"

"Todoroki..." Ashido's quiet voice made him suddenly still, turning to see her looking at him with wide, almost horrified eyes. She took a deep breath as their gazes met, her face crumpling more and more as she whispered. "You... You don't know...?"

"...Don't... know...?" he repeated. Slowly he turned to look at the others, and saw similarly shocked and horrified looks. Ojiro, Akai and Mime weren't looking at him, all sporting distinct grimaces as they ducked their heads; Monoma and Rogue regarded each other with small frowns; Shouji just hung his head; Kirishima looked ready to cry... Even Asui, always cool-headed and calm, looked heavily somber compared to usual as she looked down at her hands. The only one who would meet his gaze was Anjou, her eyes narrowing as she studied him.

"You actually don't know, do you," she murmured, and he frowned.

"Know what?" he demanded, and several of the group exchanged looks. Finally Monoma took a deep breath, seeming to visibly brace himself as he forced himself to meet Shouto's gaze.

"Todoroki, I'm sorry I don't know how to say this, but... Endeavor died a year ago. You ran away a week later."

And just like that, Shouto's world shattered once more.

Number of people who predicted Endeavor was dead: zero.