The thumping of two pairs of boots could be heard making their way down the abysmally dark corridor. Roland was unsettled entering the ancient Golden Age space station. That in itself was something of a rarity. He had seen countless horrors and many of his comrades die their final deaths against hive gods and other enemies of humanity. Yet despite that the air thrummed with a dull vibration that carressed every atom of his being. The only source of light being a single line of lights tracing the floor and cutting a right at the end of the hall.

"Cayde have you found any relays or switches around here to get power going?"

"Sundance hasn't been able to find anything providing power to the station. It does have me wondering though…"

"What could possibly be powering this array along the corridor floor." Roland finished for him.

"Caesar, Akari, I need some light, can't see a damn thing in here." Caesar and Akari flashed into existence above his shoulders and projected light down the hall.

"Would it hurt you to say please and thank you every once in a while Roland?" Caesar quipped back.

"Maybe if you do something I couldn't without a pair of AA batteries, also thank you Akari." Akari hummed in delight at the praise.

"Hmmph" Caesar replied.

"Roland, I don't feel to great right now, it's as if I can feel my fingers and toes being stretched away from the rest of my body"

"It almost feels like a gravity wave," Roland replied.

At last they came towards the end of the corridor and the open door at the right of the hall was emanating a strange light blue glow. They stopped and looked at each other...

"Not it" They both said at the same time.

"Okay then how about both of us at once?" Cayde added.

"Sure fine." Roland sighed.

They entered the door and saw something incredible. In the center of the installation sat a tree upon which silver wings grew, and beyond the tree was a gateway. A portal… To where they were here to find out.

"This is it" Sundance, Cayde's ghost said.

"This is the source of the signal we received in the tower."

Roland was in awe, not of the tree, but the gateway, of which power emanated off in waves. He and Cayde approached the portal. As he drew near he could hear… whispering? Nothing he could make out, but this must be the source of the transmission.

"What is this thing? It almost looks like an old warmind asset but this gateway isn't being powered by anything." Cayde asked Roland.

"Honestly I- Do you hear that?... The whispering?" Cayde put his ear up to the portal,

"Actually- What the hell is that?"

The whispering grew louder and louder, many voices from another plane of existence spoke as one. In their mind they both heard
'THEY ARE NEEDED ELSEWHERE'

Before either of them could react the portal expanded drawing both of them in.

Darkness. Yelling. Despair.

With Roland

Roland could only feel pain as he saw nothing but darkness and felt his entire body being pulled apart atom by atom being reassembled and broken apart again, over and over. His ears full of the shouting of his friend Cayde. Without warning reality pulled itself back together around him. He was falling…

'Okay okay this is perfectly fine I've survived worse, okay fuck what do I have,

Caesar? Caesar are you there?' he could feel his mental link.'Yes but we are currently falling to our doom' 'Estimated time of impact?' 'We have about two minutes' 'Can you contact Cayde?' 'I'm trying to contact Sundance right now but there is too much radio clutter' 'Akari?' 'Present', 'Good I can't let her die, Where are we falling?' 'Earth…. Old Japan? That's weird my Geo Scanner suggest we're falling towards old Japan but the proportions are all wrong, half of Japan fell into the ocean during the collapse' 'We'll worry about it later Caesar'

Roland felt the wind ripping past him, the clouds below him approaching fast. 'If I try to halt my acceleration with a glide traveling at this speed I'm gonna break both of my legs, Caesar prepare for an immediate resurrection.' 'I figured as much'

He pointed his arms forward and fell with the wind like a diver. He was approacing the clouds and 'finally the gro-Caesar' 'I-I don't understand, how could there be such a city so far from the traveler?' 'This is- I don't- How could this exis-'

GUARDIAN DOWN

With Cayde

In an alleyway in Musutafu a bright flash appeared above an open dumpster and a large cloaked mass fell into the aforementioned dumpster with a loud crash. Cayde opened his eyes and took in the trash surrounding him.

"Excellent, right in the freaking dumpster!" Cayde stood up on the trash a vaulted out of the dumpster. He felt something heavy on his cloak and turned his head around to inspect his the cloak of his old friend. He fell onto his knees and looked to the sky,

"Traveler above do you know hard it's going to be to wash the stains out of this thing!" 'Geez it really is one thing after another huh'. He looked around at the buildings he was between. Listened to the traffic and people at either end of the alley.

"Hey Sundance, where in the city are we? I haven't seen any part of it with such archaic architecture."

"Cayde… while you were taking your little nap I tried to make sense of where we were taken… You are not going to believe this"

Sundance's tone peeved Cayde, it was not something he was familiar with.

"Sundance what's with the serious tone, lay it on me"

"We aren't in the last city, this place is about 8,000 km from where the city would be"

"Would be?" Now Cayde was confused. 'All I can remember is being on the Cocytus and the portal with Roland…'

"I can't contact the tower, and I can't feel my connection to the Traveler. Cayde.. This is unprecedented."

"Can you find some network here, figure out where we are, contact Caesar and Roland, I smell Ramen down the corner and I'm famished."

"I'll work on it"

Later…...With Roland

On Dagobah beach a lone ghost pulses with paracausal energy and a Guardian materialises.

"Traveler I hate this, everytime I get resurrected it's like I can taste my own mouth and smell my own nose…-Caesar can you connect me with Cayde?!"

"I just received a signal from Sundance… No header or context, just a location…"

"Bring it up on my HUD. Put me into some casual clothes too. This isn't the city and I don't want to stand out." Caesar complied and Roland saw the waypoint appear in front of him while his casual attire rematerialised onto him.

30 minutes later

Roland came up on the intersection where Sundance's signal relayed him walking all around him, he looked around to see if he could find Cayde.

"Where could that bastard possib-oh… of course." He smelt a large waft of ramen enter his nose, 'Where else would he be.' He turned to the left and saw a man with a stained dirty cloak sitting at a ramen stand, an empty seat next to him. He walked over and took a seat next to Cayde and gave him a hard slap on the back, causing Cayde to choke on his divine noodles.

"Hey Bud! I've been having a rough day mind telling me what's going on?" Roland asked with a strained smile.

"You think you've been having it rough bud? I got transmatted above a dumpster and got my favorite cloak ruined!" Roland leaned closer to Cayde, "Listen here, I just got transmatted 40,000 feet in the sky, and had to break my fall with my body, so just give me the low down won't you Cayde?" Roland closed is eyes and smiled at Cayde.

"Sundance bring up a suppression field." The sounds around them blurred out until they were completely mute. Cayde looked to Roland,

"You're not gonna believe this Roland… Sundance has been doing some digging, we found out a few things. For starters, there is no traveler here, there are over 10 billion people worldwide, and it would appear that we are currently in the 22nd century."

Roland blinked.

"Come again?"

"That isn't even all of it, over 90% of the population here have unique powers they call quirks or meta abilities depending on who you ask, but the best part… There is no Darkness, there hasn't been a collapse."

Roland blinked again.

"So from what I can tell from this is that we are in a separate reality, since that history doesn't match up with the cryptarchs archives, we've got a happy healthy planet and no traveler well after it should have arrived, and there's no darkness?"

"Yeah pretty much, I'm going to have Sundance send you the Language files of where we are currently at, they also have these Pro-Heroes that make a living off of saving people with their powers."

"That's cool and all Cayde but we need to find a place to stay and a way to get back home. I'll have Caesar do some more digging and see if he can find any other Guardians that got stranded here. For the meantime let's go on a walk and see what the hell we are working with."

Izuku was having a bad day, and it was about to get much worse.

It had started in class earlier that day when the teacher told everyone about his desire to go to UA. Kacchan did not take that well. He could feel the flaky burnt pages from his notebook in between his arms, the bruises that would take days to heal around his body. All he wanted to do was save people! And now here he was walking down the street moping around thinking about the last thing Kacchan said to him… 'Maybe you'll get a quirk in another life if you take a swan dive off the roof!'... How could he not realise how much that hurts? 'It's pointless mulling over it, I might as well get home and put in the next entry to my hero jou-' His thoughts were interrupted by a goopy sloshing noise behind him. He turned around and was completely enveloped in sludge. He could feel the sludge worming underneath his clothes and filling his mouth and nose.

"Don't worry I'm just going to take over your body." The sludge villain grinned. But Izuku fought back and tried to pull him off but to no avail.

"I- can't… breathe…" Izuku mustered out, He kept pulling.

"You can't grab me! I'm a fluid!" Izuku continued to struggle but he was gaining no ground.

He knew it. 'I'm going to die here aren't I? I'm weak and useless and can't do anything and I'm going to die here..please! I need to do something!'

"STOP IT!" an unfamiliar voice rang out before Izuku's vision faded, his lungs stopped breathing, his brain stopped thinking, his heart stopped beating.

Roland and Cayde were looking at a creature unlike anything they had ever seen, and within this sludge monstrosity was a boy, a child.

"What are you bastards going to do to me? Stop me?" The villain mocked and chided.

Roland looked to Cayde,

"I've got this Cayde… Caesar, Akari, Combat robes now." The sludge villain was confused when he saw two strange drones floating above his shoulders, followed by a flash and he was wearing strange clothes, on Roland's body was his Warlock Officer Garments fitted for field use. His helmet, the wrath trail hood, two horns protruding out from his helmet. His gloves and robes being the Seventh Seraph valkyrian tailored armour he had acquired when re-establishing Rasputin's system wide defenses, and his boots, experimental geomag stabilizers.

Did he expect to defeat him with a quirk that changes clothes?

The Sludge Villain laughed for the last time.

The Warlock lunged at incredible speed, fiery radiance emanating from his hands, and from his palm unfiltered solar winds struck at the sludge villain completely blasting him back against the wall leaving the small boy where he was, now falling Roland caught him and gently laid him against the ground. "Caesar?"

"He's gone but Akari wants to check something" Akari scanned and inspected the young boy. His light would be voracious, she could feel it, his will would be unbreakable, but his mind would one day be without equal, she knew it. For 800 years Akari had been searching for her chosen, a new guardian to use their light to push back the enemies of humanity. She had lost hope, convinced after 750 years that she would never find her chosen. But when she had met Roland wandering the Sub-Saharan Dead Zone he offered to help her, to allow her to follow him wherever he went in the system. He had been apart of a small group known as the ghost guard, not quite as important as the pilgrim guard but they would help ghosts like her find their chosen. And the moment was now. Before she could prepare they heard a rumbling coming from the sewage vent behind him.

"I AM HERE!" All might voice thundered out. Wait. All Might looked around and saw the sludge villain completely disoriented and unconscious against the wall, two strange men wearing armour and robes he had never seen before, and the form of a small boy lying on the ground. All Might jumped to the boy at lightning speeds and looked up to Roland,

"What happened here young man?" Roland scoffed,

"I didn't see the whole thing but that pile of mud just killed this kid." All Might's eyes widened,

"Roland! It's him! He's the one! My Chosen!It's finally happened! Centuries of looking and I've found my Guardian!" Roland looked over at Akari and smiled, then turning his head back to All Might,

"Oh he'll brush it off, been a long time coming, huh Cayde!"

"How could you be happy about this?" All Might was genuinely perplexed, they had just seen this young boy die.

A bright flash of light more potent than the sun stole everyone's attention.

"Eye's up! Guardian! Eye's up!" Akari sang out.

"How did I get here? Where's my mom? What are you why is ALL MIGHT! OH MY GOD IT'S ALL MIGHT" All might didn't understand what was going on, this boy was dead, was that man's quirk the ability to bring those back to life? Whatever it was, his time limit was almost up and he needed to get the villain and get out before his secret was revealed. Cayde walked closer to the group.

"All right All Might- Hey that rhymed! Let's get this kid on his feet and all go discuss some things in private over some ramen? You're probably really confused so it would be good for us to clear that up, sound good? Good." In an eruption of steam and a cough of blood a frail and skinny skeleton of a man standing where all might stood.

"Huh?" Cayde, Roland, and the Kinderguardian sat there in a silent disbelief. Izuku opened his mouth,

"All Might?" All Might wasn't used to this kind of attention, sure he was Japan's number one hero but this was different. All Might stood up,

"I believe this would warrant an explanation. Where would be a good place to explain all of this?" Cayde looked over,

"Anywhere really, Ramen?"

Everyone nodded in agreement.