Word spread like radiation. Nobody could explain the crater in Training Hall C—walls fused, gravity sensors unreadable. The faculty called it an equipment malfunction. Students called it a warning. Whatever it was, it started around Uraraka, and that changed everything.
In daylight she smiled, joked, ate lunch with the others. At night she felt the hum in her chest: invisible, omnipresent, like a second heartbeat syncing with hers.
Midoriya avoided direct eye contact now—too much understanding between them. Bakugo kept watch from a distance, eyes twitching with unspoken questions. And above them, the school surveillance feeds began to glitch—frames repeating, timestamps disappearing. Space, time, data: all starting to bend.
By the third night, voices started to whisper through her comms unit when it was powered off. Not random static—*versions* of voices. Hers, but older. Midoriya's, deeper. Bakugo's, sounding broken. Words about worlds folded in on themselves.
Then one called her name perfectly.
"Ochaco."
She turned. A boy stood in the courtyard, bearing Todoroki's face but with one key change: one half burned, the other not frost but pure absence, as if painted in void.
"Which class are you from?" she asked, already knowing the answer wouldn't fit.
He looked past her toward U.A.'s towers. "From a universe where you destroyed this place. Where gravity collapsed the city into a point of light."
Her throat tightened. "Why come here?"
"To warn you," he said, "or to watch it happen again. I haven't decided."
Behind him, the air thinned. A gloved hand slipped from a breach—Midoriya's, or another version of Midoriya's. This one's eyes glowed a dull crimson. Two of him now: the one she knew, somewhere on this Earth, and this traveller, humming with equations that no science teacher in her dimension could read.
He bowed slightly. "Entropy loves repetition."
"Why me?" she whispered.
"Because you're the only constant in the collapse."
Before she could answer, explosions dotted the horizon. Bakugo's signal—real Bakugo. The noise tore the sky open, but not from this world; the clouds themselves glowed with inverted lightning, orange turning violet.
Mina and Jiro rushed from the dorms, half‑armored, half‑terrified.
"What's going on?" Jiro asked.
Mina frowned. "The ground's pulsing. Like it's breathing."
It was. Every few seconds, gravity surged downward then released, the earth heaving in rhythm with Uraraka's heart. She hadn't touched her quirk. It was using her now.
Out of nowhere, a shadow fell—massive, heroic, but worn to its core. A figure landed between them, trench coat flaring: All Might, older, bleaker, face an architecture of wrinkles and ash.
"Kid," he said to her. Not *young hero*. Just *kid.*
"I've met a dozen versions of you," he continued. "Half became saviors. Half didn't. The line between them is thin."
"What's the line made of?" she asked.
"Regret."
Behind him, the alternate Todoroki stepped closer, silence his expression. "Every universe revolves around a choice," he murmured. "Tonight's yours. Midoriya's waiting at your gravitational core—the heart of all this. Go, and things end. Stay, and the worlds fuse."
Bakugo arrived like a storm, smoke rising off him, eyes feral. He didn't care about multiverses. He saw her standing among silhouettes from other realities and decided one truth: none of them were taking her.
He grabbed her wrist.
"You don't trust them," he snarled. "You trust *me*, right?"
Her response was dangerously calm. "Do I?"
The alternate Midoriya raised a hand, and the world fractured.
A thousand copies of U.A., stacked like mirrors, rippled into sight—each with its own Uraraka, some laughing, some burning, some crowned like gods. All Might's words echoed: *thin line.*
Uraraka inhaled slowly. The field around her stabilized. She looked up—dozens of skies, all bending inward toward her coordinates. "If gravity's claiming me," she said quietly, "then maybe I should see who's pulling."
The multiverse tilted.