What if deku and Rogue were teleported to Crysis world

 

The transition between realities was not a doorway. It was a meat grinder.

 

One moment, Izuku Midoriya was standing on the shattered pavement of a Tokyo intersection, the acrid smell of ozone and burning asphalt stinging his nostrils. He was in the middle of a raid, working alongside a chaotic, temporary alliance of Pro Heroes and a group of bizarre, brightly costumed foreigners who called themselves the X-Men. They had cornered the villain—a desperate, weeping man whose Quirk had mutated beyond his control, tearing holes in the fabric of space-time.

 

Then came the flash of blinding, kaleidoscopic light. The sickening sensation of being stretched across a million miles of empty space. The air vanished from Izuku’s lungs, replaced by a freezing vacuum that threatened to boil the blood in his veins.

 

And then, just as suddenly as the nightmare began, gravity returned with a vengeance.

 

Izuku’s eyes snapped open. The sky above him was not the smog-filtered gray of a Japanese cityscape, but a brilliant, searing, tropical blue. The freezing vacuum was gone, replaced by air so thick, hot, and humid it felt like breathing through a wet wool blanket.

 

He was falling.

 

Terminal velocity, his brain supplied, the analytical part of his mind stubbornly clinging to logic even as panic set in. The wind roared in his ears, a deafening hurricane that made his eyes water. Beneath him lay a vast, unbroken expanse of vibrant green canopy. A jungle. An impossibly massive jungle, sprawling over jagged mountains and bordered by the sparkling expanse of a turquoise ocean.

 

I need to use Blackwhip, Izuku thought frantically, extending his arms toward the rapidly approaching treeline. I need to grapple a thick branch, swing, bleed off the momentum—

 

"Deku! Hold on, sugah!"

 

The voice sliced through the roar of the wind. Izuku twisted mid-air. Hurtling toward him, arms outstretched and a look of fierce determination on her face, was Rogue. Her auburn hair, accented by those iconic stark white streaks, whipped wildly around her face. Her green and yellow leather flight jacket flapped violently in the slipstream.

 

Unlike Izuku, who was tumbling at the mercy of gravity, Rogue was flying. She cut through the air like a missile, accelerating with a sheer force of will that defied physics.

 

"Rogue!" Izuku yelled, the wind snatching the word from his mouth.

 

She closed the distance in a fraction of a second. Strong, leather-gloved hands grabbed him by the reinforced straps of his hero costume’s harness. The sudden deceleration was jarring, knocking the remaining breath from Izuku's lungs as Rogue pulled up, fighting against the momentum of their fall.

 

"I gotcha!" she grunted, her muscles straining as they skimmed the absolute top of the canopy.

 

But their velocity was too great, and they were too low. Rogue couldn't completely arrest their fall in time. They clipped the top of a massive, ancient mahogany tree. The impact shattered the uppermost branches, sending a shower of green leaves and splintered wood into the air.

 

"Brace yourself!" Rogue shouted. She twisted her body mid-air, wrapping her arms around Izuku and pulling him against her chest, turning her own invulnerable back toward the unforgiving jungle floor.

 

They tore through the canopy like a meteor. Thick vines snapped like thread; branches as thick as a man's torso shattered against Rogue’s back. The world became a chaotic blur of green, brown, and the deafening crack of breaking timber.

 

Finally, with a tremendous, bone-rattling thud, they hit the ground. A crater of displaced mud and pulverized ferns exploded outward.

 

For a long moment, there was only the ringing in Izuku’s ears and the sound of settling debris.

 

Slowly, the world faded back in. The oppressive heat of the jungle immediately went to work on him, sweat instantly beading on his forehead. Izuku groaned, his entire body aching, though surprisingly, nothing felt broken. He pushed himself up, coughing as the dust settled.

 

"Rogue?" he croaked, looking around.

 

The crater was empty, save for him. The impact had been so violent they had bounced upon hitting the ground, and in the chaos of snapping vines and breaking branches, they had been separated.

 

"Rogue!" Izuku called out, louder this time. He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the screaming protest of his bruised ribs. He looked up. A jagged hole in the canopy, perhaps two hundred feet above, let in a shaft of blinding tropical sunlight.

 

Silence answered him. Well, not silence, exactly. The jungle was alive with noise—the shrieking of exotic birds, the low drone of millions of insects, the rustle of leaves in the humid breeze. But there was no human voice. No sign of the mutant who had just saved his life.

 

Izuku pressed a hand to his head, trying to steady his racing thoughts. Okay. Calm down. You're a hero. Think.

 

He examined his surroundings. The flora was massive, ancient, and completely alien to him. Giant ferns, towering palms, and thick, moss-covered roots the size of cars dominated the landscape. This wasn't Japan. The villain's Quirk hadn't just teleported them across the city; it had thrown them across the world. Maybe even into a different world entirely. The X-Men had warned him about dimensional travel, about the instability of their multiverse.

 

I need to find Rogue. She has flight and super strength, but she could still be disoriented or trapped under debris.

 

Izuku took a deep breath, letting the familiar power of One For All pool in his stomach. He didn't want to alert anyone—or anything—to his presence, so he kept it suppressed, relying purely on his natural athleticism as he began to navigate the dense underbrush.

 

He walked for what felt like miles, though it could only have been a few hundred yards. The jungle was suffocating. His hero costume, designed for the temperate climate of Japan, was trapping the heat. Sweat poured down his face, stinging his eyes.

 

Suddenly, a sound cut through the ambient noise of the jungle.

 

Snap.

 

It was the distinct, sharp sound of a dry twig breaking under a heavy boot.

 

Izuku froze, pressing his back against the wide trunk of a massive banyan tree. He held his breath, straining his ears.

 

"...빨리 움직여. 낙하 지점을 확인해야 한다..." (Move quickly. We need to check the drop zone...)

 

Voices. Human voices. They were harsh, spoken in sharp, clipped tones.

 

Korean? Izuku thought, recognizing the cadence from language classes at UA, even if he couldn't translate the specific words.

 

Hope flared in his chest. If there were people here, there was civilization. Maybe they had seen Rogue fall. Maybe they could point him toward a city or a communications relay. He stepped out from behind the banyan tree, raising his hands in a universal gesture of peace.

 

"Excuse me!" Izuku called out in Japanese, then quickly switched to halting, heavily accented English. "Hello? I need help! I am lost!"

 

The voices stopped instantly.

 

From the dense foliage, four men emerged. Izuku felt his stomach drop.

 

These weren't hikers. They weren't local villagers. They were soldiers.

 

They wore dark, olive-drab military fatigues, thick tactical vests loaded with ammunition pouches, and combat helmets. But it was what they were holding that made the blood freeze in Izuku’s veins. Each man had a heavily modified FY71 assault rifle raised and pressed tightly into their shoulders.

 

The muzzles were pointed directly at his chest.

 

"손 들어! 당장!" (Hands up! Now!) the lead soldier barked, his face a mask of furious intensity.

 

Izuku kept his hands high. "I—I don't want to fight! I'm a Pro Hero from Japan! My name is Izuku Midoriya. I was caught in an accident—"

 

"무기를 버려라! 엎드려!" (Drop your weapons! Get on the ground!) another soldier yelled, his finger tightening on the trigger.

 

Izuku didn't need to speak Korean to understand the universal language of a drawn weapon. The hostility radiating from them was palpable. There was no hesitation in their eyes, no confusion at his strange green costume. There was only the cold, hard discipline of men trained to eliminate threats.

 

"Please, you don't understand!" Izuku took a single step backward, his hands still raised.

 

The lead soldier didn't issue a warning shot. He didn't fire into the air. He aimed center mass and pulled the trigger.

 

CRACK!

 

The sound of the gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space of the jungle. Time seemed to dilate for Izuku. His Danger Sense—the Quirk inherited from the fourth user of One For All—screamed in the back of his skull a fraction of a millisecond before the trigger was pulled.

 

Instinct took over. Green lightning erupted across Izuku’s body as he activated One For All at eight percent. Full Cowling.

 

He pivoted sharply to the left. The supersonic bullet sheared through the space where his heart had been a microsecond before, ripping a hole through the fabric of his costume and grazing his side. It felt like a hot iron had just been dragged across his ribs.

 

Izuku gasped, rolling across the muddy jungle floor and taking cover behind a massive, moss-covered log as the jungle erupted into chaos.

 

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!

 

Automatic fire tore through the vegetation. The log Izuku was hiding behind shuddered violently as high-caliber rounds chewed into the wood, sending deadly splinters raining down on him.

 

They're shooting to kill! Izuku’s mind raced, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. No hesitation. No monologue. They just pulled the trigger!

 

He had fought villains before. He had faced Shigaraki, Overhaul, Muscular. But villains, with all their immense power, usually fought with a twisted sense of ego or malice. This was different. This was cold, mechanical, and horrifyingly efficient. These weren't villains showing off their Quirks; these were professional soldiers employing lethal force against an unknown entity in a warzone.

 

"측면으로 돌아가! 놈을 포위해!" (Flank him! Surround the target!)

 

Izuku heard the crunch of boots in the mud as the soldiers spread out, moving in a practiced tactical formation to flank his position. He couldn't stay here. He would be pinned down and torn to shreds.

 

I don't want to hurt them, Izuku thought, clenching his fists, the green bio-electricity dancing across his knuckles. They're just people. I have to incapacitate them without lethal force.

 

Izuku inhaled sharply, focusing his power into his legs.

 

He sprang from behind the log, a blur of green lightning. The sudden movement caught the soldiers off guard. A hail of bullets chased him, snapping branches and kicking up geysers of mud, but Izuku was moving too fast. He bounced off the trunk of a tree, changing his trajectory mid-air, and dropped directly into the center of the squad.

 

Before the lead soldier could pivot his rifle, Izuku swung a leg, executing a flawless sweep kick. The soldier’s feet went out from under him, and he crashed hard into the mud, his rifle clattering away.

 

The man next to him shouted in alarm and brought his weapon to bear. Izuku didn't punch him—he knew the raw kinetic force of One For All, even at a low percentage, could shatter a normal human's sternum and stop their heart. Instead, he reached out with his right arm.

 

Blackwhip!

 

Tendrils of dark, crackling energy erupted from Izuku's forearm. They lashed out, wrapping tightly around the barrel of the soldier's FY71. With a sharp tug, Izuku ripped the weapon from the man's grasp, spinning it into the dense brush. He followed up with a precise palm strike to the soldier's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him and dropping him to his knees.

 

Two down. Two to go.

 

But as Izuku turned to face the remaining soldiers, a chilling sound echoed through the jungle.

 

The shrill blast of a whistle, followed by a chorus of shouts from deeper in the vegetation. The brush rustled violently, and suddenly, six more soldiers poured into the clearing, their weapons already raised. One of them carried a heavy squad automatic weapon (SAW).

 

Oh no, Izuku thought, his eyes widening.

 

"사격 개시!" (Open fire!)

 

The jungle exploded into a wall of lead.

 

Izuku didn't try to fight. He couldn't. Defeating two men non-lethally was one thing; taking on a fully armed infantry squad in open combat without crossing the line into lethal force was suicide.

 

He channeled fifteen percent of One For All into his legs and vaulted straight up into the air, leaping thirty feet into the canopy just as the ground he had been standing on was chewed to a pulp by the heavy machine gun. Leaves shredded around him as the soldiers tracked his movement, firing upward.

 

Izuku deployed Blackwhip from both arms, latching onto the thickest branches he could find. He swung like a pendulum, hauling himself higher and deeper into the canopy, moving with erratic, unpredictable swings to avoid the gunfire.

 

"He’s in the trees! Suppressing fire!" a voice bellowed from below, in heavily accented but perfectly understandable English this time.

 

Bullets zipped past Izuku, some passing so close he could feel the displacement of air on his cheeks. He swung from branch to branch, moving as fast as he dared through the dense, blinding foliage, his Danger Sense giving him split-second warnings to dodge the worst of the volleys.

 

He didn't stop until he was at least a mile away, the sounds of shouting and gunfire fading into the ambient noise of the jungle.

 

Izuku dropped onto a thick, sturdy branch high above the jungle floor, gasping for breath. He leaned back against the massive trunk of the tree, his chest heaving, his heart pounding in his ears. He looked down at his side. The graze from the first bullet was bleeding, staining his green suit a dark, wet crimson. It stung fiercely, a stark, painful reminder of the reality he had just been thrust into.

 

"This... this isn't right," Izuku muttered to himself, his hands shaking slightly as he pressed a clean part of his glove against the wound to staunch the bleeding. "This is an active military zone. Who are they? Why are they shooting on sight?"

 

He looked out over the canopy. Somewhere out there, Rogue was alone. If she encountered those soldiers...

 

Izuku swallowed hard. He knew Rogue was incredibly powerful, practically invulnerable, but a creeping dread settled in his stomach. This wasn't a game. This wasn't a hero training exercise.

 

This was a war. And he needed to find her before it escalated.

 

 

 

Elsewhere in the Lingshan Jungle...

 

Anna Marie—better known to the world, the X-Men, and the criminal underworld as Rogue—woke up to the feeling of cold, hard plastic biting into her wrists.

 

She kept her eyes closed for a moment, letting her other senses assess the situation. The air was sweltering, thick with the smell of damp earth, diesel fuel, and stale sweat. She was kneeling on hard, packed dirt. She could hear the hum of a portable generator nearby, the static hiss of a long-range radio, and the low, murmuring voices of several men.

 

Bound. Captured while unconscious, she deduced with the calm, detached pragmatism of a woman who had spent years fighting for her life alongside the world's most hated and feared mutants. Amateurs.

 

She flexed her fingers. Her hands were secured behind her back, her wrists bound by heavy-duty tactical zip-ties. The thick, reinforced polymer was designed to hold the strongest, most violent prisoners securely. To Rogue, it felt like someone had tied her up with wet pasta.

 

She opened her eyes, blinking against the harsh glare of a portable halogen floodlight that had been set up to illuminate her.

 

She was in the center of a small, hastily constructed military outpost. Sandbags were stacked in a semicircle around a communications tent. A heavy machine gun was mounted on a tripod to her left, manned by a nervous-looking soldier who kept glancing at her. Parked a few yards away was an open-topped light tactical vehicle, a jeep painted in woodland camouflage.

 

Standing directly in front of her, smoking a thin cigarette, was an officer. His uniform was crisp, his boots polished despite the mud, and the insignia on his collar indicated a high rank. He was flanked by four heavily armed guards, their rifles held at the low ready.

 

When the officer saw her eyes open, he tossed his cigarette into the mud and ground it out beneath his boot. He stepped forward, a sneer twisting his features.

 

"Finally awake," the officer said in heavily accented English. He leaned down, placing his hands on his knees so his face was inches from hers. "You are an American spy. An unregistered combatant operating on sovereign territory of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea."

 

Rogue blinked at him, completely unbothered. She looked past him, scanning the treeline, searching for any sign of a messy mop of green hair. "Where's the kid?"

 

The officer frowned, clearly annoyed that she wasn't cowering in fear. "You will answer my questions. What is your mission? How did you bypass our radar?"

 

Rogue sighed, rolling her shoulders. Her neck was a little stiff from the fall, but otherwise, she felt perfectly fine. The mahogany tree that had broken their fall had been pulverized against her spine, but to her, it had felt like falling onto a slightly firm mattress.

 

"Look, sugar," Rogue said, her thick Mississippi drawl dripping with condescension. "I don't know who you are, I don't know what this 'Democratic People's Republic of whatever' is, and I really don't care. I'm having a bad day. I got sucked through a magic portal, I fell out of the sky, and I lost my friend. So, I'm gonna ask you one more time..."

 

Her green eyes narrowed, hardening into chips of emerald ice.

 

"Where. Is. The kid?"

 

The officer straightened up, his face flushing red with anger. He drew a heavy, matte-black pistol from his hip holster and pressed the barrel directly against Rogue’s forehead.

 

"You think this is a joke, American whore?" he spat, thumbing back the hammer. "You will talk, or you will die."

 

Rogue stared down the barrel of the gun. She didn't flinch. A slow, dangerous smirk spread across her lips.

 

"Honey," she purred, "you brought a popgun to a mutant fight."

 

Rogue flexed her arms, pulling her wrists apart with a sudden, violent jerk. The heavy-duty polymer zip-ties didn't just snap; they exploded, shattering into plastic shrapnel with a loud CRACK that echoed through the camp.

 

The officer’s eyes widened in shock. He pulled the trigger.

 

BANG.

 

The bullet struck Rogue dead center in the forehead from two inches away. The kinetic force of a 9mm round at point-blank range is enough to shatter a human skull like a dropped melon.

 

For Rogue, the bullet flattened into a disc of hot lead against her skin and dropped harmlessly into the mud. She didn't even blink. The impact didn't even leave a red mark on her skin.

 

The silence that followed was absolute. The officer stood frozen, his pistol still smoking, staring at the flattened bullet in the dirt, and then back up at the unblemished skin of his prisoner's forehead. His mind simply refused to process what had just happened.

 

"My turn," Rogue whispered.

 

She moved faster than humanly possible. Her right hand shot out, grabbing the officer by the front of his tactical vest. With a casual, effortless flick of her wrist, she threw him.

 

The man sailed through the air like a ragdoll, flying thirty feet backward before crashing headfirst into a stack of sandbags, instantly unconscious.

 

"Kill her!" the machine gunner screamed in Korean, panic completely overriding his training.

 

The four guards flanking the officer raised their FY71s and opened fire simultaneously.

 

Rogue didn't dive for cover. She simply stood up, letting the barrage of high-velocity rounds strike her. The bullets hit her leather jacket, tearing through the material with sickening thuds, but the moment the lead touched her skin, it stopped dead. The air filled with the sharp pinging sounds of flattened bullets ricocheting off her invulnerable body, falling like metallic rain around her boots.

 

She casually reached up and brushed a flattened bullet out of her auburn hair, her expression one of utter annoyance. "This jacket is vintage, you idiots."

 

She lunged forward. She didn't want to kill them—despite her rough exterior, she was an X-Man, and Charles Xavier’s lessons about the sanctity of human life were deeply ingrained in her. She pulled her punches drastically.

 

She slapped the barrel of the first soldier's rifle, bending the hardened steel at a ninety-degree angle as easily as if it were made of warm taffy. The soldier stared at his ruined weapon in horror before Rogue delivered a soft tap to his forehead, sending him crumpling to the ground, out cold.

 

The second soldier tried to draw his combat knife. Rogue simply caught his wrist, squeezed just hard enough to make him drop the blade, and tossed him casually over her shoulder into the communications tent. The tent collapsed in a tangle of canvas and sparking electronics.

 

The heavy machine gunner on the tripod finally found his nerve and squeezed the trigger. The massive weapon roared to life, spitting armor-piercing rounds at her.

 

Rogue groaned, crossing her arms over her face to protect her eyes from the blinding muzzle flash and the sheer kinetic annoyance of the heavy rounds. The bullets hammered against her forearms, feeling like someone violently flicking her with their fingers over and over again.

 

"Okay, now you're just being loud," Rogue muttered.

 

She stomped her boot into the dirt, kicking up a massive clod of mud that temporarily blinded the gunner. In the span of a heartbeat, she closed the distance. She grabbed the red-hot barrel of the heavy machine gun with her bare hands—ignoring the sizzling sound—and ripped the entire weapon, tripod and all, out of the ground. She swung it like a baseball bat, using the blunt end of the tripod to strike the gunner firmly in the chest, sending him flying into the jungle.

 

Only two guards remained. They had stopped firing. Their rifles hung limp in their hands as they stared at the woman standing in the center of their ruined camp, unharmed, her clothes riddled with bullet holes but her skin completely untouched.

 

Rogue cracked her knuckles, the sound echoing ominously in the sudden silence.

 

The two guards looked at each other, dropped their weapons, and sprinted away into the jungle as fast as their legs could carry them, screaming in terror.

 

"Yeah, you better run!" Rogue shouted after them, dusting off her jeans.

 

She surveyed the ruined camp. The radio was destroyed, the soldiers were either unconscious or fleeing, and she was no closer to finding Deku. She sighed, running a hand through her hair. The kid was smart, and he had a good head on his shoulders, but his Quirk broke his own bones half the time, and he was too damn heroic for his own good. In a warzone like this, his instinct to save everyone was going to get him killed.

 

She needed a vantage point.

 

Rogue walked over to the military jeep parked on the edge of the camp. She grabbed the front bumper with both hands. She planted her feet, taking a deep breath, and heaved upward.

 

With a groan of bending metal and groaning suspension, the entire two-ton vehicle lifted off the ground. Rogue hoisted it completely over her head, balancing it perfectly. She turned toward the only tall structure in the area—a hastily constructed wooden watchtower fifty yards away.

 

"Fore!" she yelled.

 

She threw the jeep. It soared through the air in a graceful, terrifying arc, slamming directly into the center of the watchtower. The structure exploded in a shower of splinters, collapsing into a heap of ruined timber and smoking vehicle parts.

 

Rogue dusted her hands off, satisfied. If Deku was anywhere nearby, he’d definitely hear that.

 

She bent her knees, preparing to leap into the air and take flight to begin an aerial search, when something caught her eye.

 

Over the distant ridge of the jungle, perhaps two or three miles away, a sudden, blinding flash of emerald-green bio-electricity illuminated the canopy. It arched upward into the sky like a localized lightning strike, beautiful and unmistakable.

 

Rogue smiled. "Found ya, kid."

 

Without another second of hesitation, she crouched low, the ground beneath her boots cracking from the pressure. She launched herself into the sky, creating a miniature sonic boom that flattened the remaining grass in the camp. She tore through the humid air, flying like a bullet toward the source of the green lightning.

 

 

 

Subject: Nomad

Current Objective: Locate and Secure Lingshan Excavation Site

Suit Status: Maximum Armor Engaged

 

From the dense foliage overlooking the ruined KPA outpost, a predator watched.

 

He made no sound. He cast no shadow. To the naked eye, there was absolutely nothing there, save for a slight, shimmering distortion in the air, like heat rising off asphalt on a summer day.

 

First Lieutenant Jake Dunn—callsign Nomad—stood perfectly still in the shadows of the banyan tree, the cloaking mechanism of his Nanosuit rendering him entirely invisible.

 

Inside the helmet, Nomad’s HUD was a chaotic stream of data. Tactical overlays scanned the ruined camp below. Thermal imaging tracked the unconscious bodies of the Korean soldiers. Audio sensors picked up the groans of the recovering officer.

 

But Nomad’s attention was entirely focused on the sky. His helmet's optics zoomed in, tracking the impossible trajectory of the woman who had just defied every known law of physics.

 

He had seen the whole thing. He had been tracking this KPA patrol for twenty minutes, preparing to ambush them, when they had dragged the unconscious woman into the clearing. Nomad had been assessing the best way to extract the prisoner when she woke up.

 

He had watched her shatter military-grade polymers with a flex. He had watched her take a point-blank 9mm round to the skull without flinching. He had watched her shrug off concentrated assault rifle fire, dismantle a heavy machine gun with her bare hands, and then throw a two-ton jeep into a watchtower.

 

And then, she had flown away. No jetpack. No propulsion system. She had simply jumped into the sky and vanished.

 

"Nomad, this is Prophet, do you copy?"

 

The deep, gravelly voice of his squad leader crackled in his earpiece, pulling Nomad out of his shock.

 

"Copy, Prophet. I hear you," Nomad whispered, his voice modulated and encrypted by the suit.

 

"Satellites are picking up localized seismic and thermal anomalies in your sector," Prophet said, his tone tight with urgency. "Energy spikes that don't match anything in the KPA arsenal. We also just intercepted a burst of panicking Korean radio traffic. They're screaming about... super-soldiers. Bioweapons. Invulnerable Americans. What the hell is going on down there, Nomad?"

 

Nomad looked back at the flattened bullet resting in the mud where the woman had been shot. He engaged his suit's binoculars, locking onto the distant ridge where a bizarre flash of green lightning had just illuminated the sky. The woman was flying directly toward it.

 

The Nanosuit was a billion-dollar piece of experimental hardware. It was the pinnacle of human engineering, designed to make its wearer a god on the battlefield.

 

But what Nomad had just seen... that wasn't engineering. That was something else entirely.

 

"Prophet..." Nomad said slowly, disengaging his cloak as he stepped out of the brush, his sleek, muscle-like Nanosuit gleaming in the dappled sunlight. "You're not going to believe this."

 

"Report, Lieutenant," Prophet demanded.

 

Nomad raised his customized SCAR assault rifle, checking the magazine out of pure muscle memory, his eyes locked on the distant green lightning.

 

"We have unknowns on the island," Nomad said, his voice grim. "And Prophet? I don't think they're Korean. I don't think they're even human."

 

Nomad engaged his suit's speed module.

 

"Maximum Speed," the suit's artificial voice confirmed in his ear.

 

He took off into the jungle, moving as a blur, a silver ghost tearing through the underbrush, sprinting toward the green light. He didn't know what these anomalies were, but they were in his AO, and they were wildcards in an already volatile warzone.

 

He was going to intercept them. And if they were hostile, he was going to find out if even an "invulnerable" target could survive an encounter with Raptor Team.

 

The canopy of the Lingshan jungle was a world unto itself. A dense, interwoven ceiling of emerald leaves, thick vines, and ancient branches that blocked out the worst of the tropical sun. It was here, suspended a hundred feet above the forest floor, that Izuku Midoriya finally allowed himself to stop.

 

He slumped against the colossal trunk of a Kapok tree, his chest heaving, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The adrenaline that had propelled him away from the Korean military patrol was beginning to crash, leaving behind a profound, aching exhaustion.

 

He looked down at his side. The bullet graze was a raw, angry line of torn flesh across his ribs. It wasn't deep—the bullet had only clipped him—but the stinging pain was a sharp anchor to reality. He tore a strip of clean cloth from the inner lining of his hero costume's leg and tied it tightly around his waist to staunch the bleeding.

 

I need to think, Izuku told himself, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. Analyze the situation. Formulate a plan.

 

Fact one: They had been caught in a dimensional Quirk anomaly. The villain in Tokyo had possessed a space-time manipulation Quirk that had fractured when cornered by the X-Men.

Fact two: This wasn't Japan. The flora was tropical, the humidity was staggering, and the language spoken by the soldiers below was Korean.

Fact three: This wasn't a hero society. Those soldiers hadn't recognized him, hadn't hesitated, and had fired with lethal intent using live ammunition. Furthermore, the weapons they were using—he had gotten a good look at the rifle he’d snatched with Blackwhip—resembled an FY71 assault rifle, a weapon platform that, in his world, had been phased out decades ago before the dawn of the Quirk era.

 

Izuku’s eyes widened as the chilling realization finally settled over him.

 

"We're not just in a different place," he whispered to the empty air, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "We're in a different world entirely. A world without Pro Heroes. A world at war."

 

A sudden, sharp rustling in the canopy above yanked him from his thoughts.

 

Izuku instantly dropped into a combat stance, ignoring the sharp protest of his ribs. Green lightning crackled to life around his limbs as he activated One For All at eight percent, his eyes scanning the dense foliage overhead.

 

CRASH.

 

A blur of green, yellow, and brown tore through the upper canopy, snapping branches like twigs. It plummeted toward him with terrifying speed, stopping dead in mid-air just ten feet away.

 

"Rogue!" Izuku gasped, the green bio-electricity vanishing instantly as overwhelming relief washed over him.

 

Rogue hovered in the air, her boots hanging weightlessly above a thick branch. Her vintage leather jacket was riddled with holes, and her jeans were covered in mud and sap, but she looked completely uninjured. Her emerald eyes scanned him from head to toe, lingering on the makeshift bandage around his ribs. Her expression darkened instantly.

 

"Who did that to you?" she demanded, her thick Southern drawl dropping an octave into something dangerously protective. She touched down lightly on the branch beside him, her gloved hands reaching out to inspect the wound.

 

"I'm fine, really, it's just a graze," Izuku said quickly, waving his hands to placate her. "I ran into a military patrol. They shot on sight. I managed to get away without hurting them too badly, but... Rogue, they were shooting to kill."

 

"I know, sugah. I ran into a welcoming committee of my own," Rogue said grimly, gently probing the bandage to ensure the bleeding had stopped. Satisfied, she leaned back against the trunk beside him, crossing her arms. "A whole camp of 'em. Kept screaming at me in Korean, calling me an American spy. Fired a point-blank 9mm right at my forehead. Ruined a perfectly good conversation."

 

Izuku stared at her, horrified, before remembering who he was talking to. "Right. Invulnerability."

 

"Comes in handy," she smirked, though the smile didn't reach her eyes. She looked out over the sprawling, endless green of the island. "You figured it out yet, brainiac? The big picture?"

 

Izuku nodded slowly, his expression solemn. "I don't think we're on our Earth anymore, Rogue. The technology, the geopolitical climate... it's all wrong. If there was a major military conflict happening on a tropical island near Korea, it would have been all over the international news. And the guns they were using... they're pre-Quirk era ballistics. Heavily modified, but old."

 

Rogue sighed, running a hand through her white-streaked hair. "Figures. The Professor warned us that when reality-warping Quirks and mutant powers mix, the multiverse gets a little leaky. So, we're stranded in a warzone in an alternate universe where people still solve their problems by shooting each other with pieces of lead. Grand."

 

"We need a plan," Izuku said, the analytical gear in his head shifting into overdrive. "We don't know the rules of engagement here. If this is a sovereign nation's military, we can't just fight them. That would make us enemy combatants, or worse, international terrorists in the eyes of this world. We need to find a way to contact someone in charge, explain our situation, and figure out how to get home."

 

Rogue gave him a fond, slightly pitying look. "Deku, honey, you're thinking like a Pro Hero. There ain't no Pro Heroes here. You saw how those soldiers reacted. They don't care about explanations. To them, we're just unknown targets. If we surrender, they'll lock us in a black site and dissect us to figure out how our powers work."

 

Izuku swallowed hard, knowing she was probably right. "So what do we do?"

 

"We survive," Rogue said simply. "We find high ground, we figure out who is fighting who, and we find the biggest, baddest piece of technology on this island that might have enough juice to punch a hole back to our universe."

 

Before Izuku could respond, a sudden, piercing spike of agony lanced through his skull.

 

It was Danger Sense. But it wasn't the dull, persistent thrum of general malice. It was a sharp, screaming klaxon warning of immediate, lethal, and invisible peril.

 

"Move!" Izuku shouted.

 

He shoved Rogue with both hands, channeling five percent of One For All into the push. The force sent her tumbling off the branch just as the empty air where she had been standing seemed to ripple and distort.

 

A massive, armored fist materialized out of thin air, striking the trunk of the Kapok tree with the force of a wrecking ball. The wood exploded in a shower of splinters, and the entire tree shuddered violently.

 

Izuku backflipped away, landing in a crouch on an adjacent branch, his eyes wide.

 

Standing on the branch, dropping his optical camouflage, was a nightmare of modern combat engineering.

 

He was a giant of a man, clad entirely in a sleek, charcoal-gray suit of artificial muscle fibers and hexagonal armor plating. It looked organic, yet entirely mechanical, a second skin woven from carbon nanotubes and bleeding-edge technology. A menacing, faceless visor glowing with a faint crimson light stared back at Izuku. He held a heavily modified SCAR assault rifle in one hand, but it was currently lowered. He had tried to take them out with physical force.

 

Subject: Nomad

Current Objective: Neutralize Unknown Biological Assets

 

Inside the Nanosuit, First Lieutenant Jake Dunn was experiencing a rare emotion: profound shock.

 

He had tracked the green lightning to this tree. He had engaged his Cloak mode, rendering him invisible to the naked eye and thermal optics, and had scaled the tree in complete silence. He had moved in for a non-lethal, incapacitating strike on the woman—knowing she was heavily armored from his earlier observations—intending to knock her out and secure the boy.

 

But the boy had known he was there.

 

Nomad’s HUD replayed the last three seconds of telemetry. The boy hadn't seen him. He hadn't heard him. The Nanosuit's stealth capabilities were absolute. Yet, the kid had reacted to a strike that was mathematically impossible for a normal human to anticipate, let alone dodge. And the force he had used to push the woman... the suit's sensors registered a sudden, massive spike of kinetic and electrical energy radiating from the boy's body.

 

What the hell is the KPA cooking up? Nomad thought, his grip tightening on his rifle. Bio-engineered super-soldiers? Mutants?

 

"Stay down, both of you," Nomad ordered. His voice, modulated by the suit’s external speakers, was a deep, intimidating, robotic growl. "I don't know what lab Kyong grew you in, but you're coming with me."

 

Izuku didn't understand the name 'Kyong', but he understood the threat. He analyzed the soldier in a fraction of a second. That suit... it's not a Quirk. It's technology. It's shifting light around him to turn invisible. And those muscle fibers... it must enhance his physical capabilities exponentially.

 

"We're not from any lab!" Izuku called out, raising his hands pacifyingly, though the green lightning continued to arc across his skin. "We aren't your enemy! We're not with the Korean army!"

 

"Right," Nomad said coldly. "And I'm the President of the United States."

 

Nomad didn't hesitate. He knew better than to monologue. He slung his rifle over his back—he needed these assets alive for CIA interrogation—and engaged his suit's primary combat module.

 

"Maximum Speed," the Nanosuit’s AI whispered in Nomad's ear.

 

Energy surged from the suit's capacitor into the synthetic muscle fibers. Nomad vanished.

 

He didn't turn invisible this time; he simply moved faster than the human eye could track. He crossed the twenty feet between the branches in a microsecond, his arm lashing out to grapple the boy, intending to pin him and administer a powerful neuro-sedative from a wrist-mounted dart.

 

But Izuku Midoriya was not a normal human. He had trained under Gran Torino. He had kept pace with Katsuki Bakugo. He had Danger Sense screaming in his ear, predicting the exact trajectory of the invisible threat.

 

Izuku engaged Full Cowling at twenty percent.

 

Nomad's hand closed on empty air. Izuku ducked beneath the blindingly fast grapple, his green-glowing form a blur as he spun on his heel.

 

He's fast! Izuku thought, his mind racing as he analyzed the fight in real-time. Incredible! The suit's artificial musculature must be injecting a synthetic catalyst to overdrive the servos! The power output is insane, but his movements are strictly linear. He accelerates fast, but he can't turn on a dime like Gran Torino!

 

"Incredible!" Izuku muttered aloud, completely unable to suppress his inner fanboy even in a life-or-death scenario. "The tensile strength of those fibers must be off the charts to withstand that kind of torque without tearing! Are they carbon-nanotube bundles? How is the power source compact enough to fit in the suit without overheating?"

 

Nomad staggered, thrown off-balance by missing his target, but recovered instantly. He spun around, staring at the kid, who was now perched on a branch above him, muttering at a million miles an hour.

 

Is he... is he analyzing my suit mid-combat? Nomad thought, bewildered.

 

Nomad leaped upward, the suit's leg servos whining as he cleared twenty feet in a single bound, bringing his fist down in a hammer blow aimed at the boy's shoulder.

 

Izuku didn't dodge this time. He raised his arms in a cross block, bracing himself.

 

The impact was like two freight trains colliding. The shockwave rattled the leaves for a hundred yards in every direction. Izuku’s boots dug deep into the wood of the branch, splintering it, but he held his ground.

 

Inside the Nanosuit, a warning flashed on Nomad's HUD.

 

WARNING: KINETIC IMPACT EXCEEDS SUIT TOLERANCE CAPABILITIES. INTEGRITY STRAIN DETECTED.

 

He blocked it, Nomad thought, actual fear spiking in his chest for the first time. Maximum Speed punch, and the kid just took it. What is he made of?

 

"You're relying too much on the suit's forward momentum!" Izuku called out, slipping his arms out from under Nomad's fist and delivering a swift, sweeping kick to the soldier's armored knee. "The armor plating is thickest on the chest and arms, but the joints rely on the flexible undersuit, making them the structural weak points!"

 

The kick landed perfectly. Nomad’s knee buckled slightly. The suit instantly diverted power to stabilize the joint, but it was enough of an opening.

 

Izuku reared his arm back. He didn't want to kill the man, so he dialed One For All down to five percent, aiming a punch squarely at the center of the armored chest piece to knock the wind out of him.

 

But before his fist could connect, a shadow fell over them both.

 

"Hey, GI Joe!"

 

Rogue dropped from the sky like an anvil.

 

She had recovered from the push, flown up above the canopy to get a clear angle, and was now hurtling downward with murderous intent. She didn't have Izuku's restraint. This armored giant had ambushed them, tried to hurt her kid, and she was done playing nice.

 

Nomad looked up. His tactical HUD instantly calculated the mass, velocity, and projected kinetic energy of the woman plummeting toward him. The numbers flashed red. Lethal threat.

 

Nomad diverted all suit energy instantly.

 

"Maximum Armor," the AI chimed.

 

A hexagonal energy shield flared to life across the entire surface of the Nanosuit, hardening the carbon-nanotube fibers until they were denser than depleted uranium. The suit became a rigid, immovable fortress, designed to withstand the blast of a tank shell.

 

Rogue’s fist connected with Nomad's chest.

 

The sound was indescribable. It was a deafening, thunderous BOOM that sounded like a sonic boom detonating at ground level. The air pressure around them shattered, creating a visible shockwave that stripped the leaves from every tree within a fifty-foot radius.

 

Izuku was blown backward by the sheer concussive force, using Blackwhip to tether himself to a branch so he wouldn't be thrown out of the tree.

 

Nomad’s Nanosuit absorbed the kinetic energy, the hexagonal shield glowing a blinding, incandescent white as it frantically tried to dissipate the force. The suit's energy reserves plummeted from one hundred percent to zero in a millisecond.

 

CRITICAL FAILURE. ARMOR DEPLETED.

 

The suit couldn't bleed off the momentum. Nomad was launched backward with the speed of a cannonball. He tore through the thick branches of the Kapok tree, snapping them like dry spaghetti, flew across the canopy, and slammed back-first into the sheer rock face of a cliff fifty yards away.

 

He hit the stone so hard it cratered, a spiderweb of cracks spreading across the granite. Nomad slumped forward, falling fifty feet to the jungle floor below, crashing into a tangle of massive ferns, utterly motionless.

 

Rogue landed gracefully on the branch Izuku was tethered to, dusting off her hands. She looked toward the cliff, a smug smile on her face. "That's what you get for sneaking up on a Southern belle."

 

Izuku stared at her, then at the distant crater in the cliff face, his face pale. "Rogue! You might have killed him!"

 

"Oh, relax, Deku. That suit he was wearing looked tougher than a Sentinel. He'll have a headache, but he's fine." She frowned, looking at her knuckles. "Though, I gotta admit, hitting him felt like punching a solid block of adamantium. Whatever that suit is made of, it ain't normal."

 

"It's a marvel of engineering," Izuku breathed, leaping from the branch and using Blackwhip to descend rapidly toward the jungle floor where the soldier had fallen. "We need to check on him. If he's alive, we can talk to him."

 

Rogue rolled her eyes, but followed him down, floating gently to the jungle floor.

 

They found Nomad lying in a crater of pulverized ferns and dirt. The Nanosuit was covered in dust, the crimson lights on his visor flickering dimly.

 

Inside the helmet, Jake Dunn’s world was ringing. His vision was swimming with static, and his ribs felt like they had been hit by a runaway train.

 

SUIT REBOOTING... ENERGY RESERVES: 5%... ARMOR OFFLINE... CLOAK OFFLINE... MEDICAL SYSTEMS ENGAGED... ADMINISTERING PAINKILLERS.

 

A hiss of compressed air echoed inside the suit as a cocktail of combat stimulants and painkillers flooded Nomad's system. He gasped, his vision clearing. He was alive. The suit had saved his life, but just barely. Another hit like that and his organs would have liquefied from the sheer kinetic shock.

 

He groaned, slowly pushing himself up onto his knees.

 

"Don't move," a voice said softly.

 

Nomad looked up. The green-haired boy was standing ten feet away, his arms glowing with that bizarre bio-electricity, but his posture wasn't aggressive. The woman in the leather jacket floated in the air a few feet behind him, glaring daggers at Nomad.

 

"Your suit's energy systems are depleted," the boy said, his voice carrying a strange, analytical calm. "If you try to move too quickly, the servos might lock up. I apologize for my friend. She's... very protective."

 

Nomad stared at them. He slowly reached for his sidearm, his muscles screaming in protest.

 

"Nomad, hold your fire! Stand down! I repeat, stand down!"

 

Prophet’s voice exploded over the radio in Nomad's ear, loud and frantic.

 

Nomad froze. "Prophet? I've engaged the hostiles. They're—"

 

"I'm looking at your suit telemetry, Nomad!" Prophet interrupted, his voice tight with an emotion that sounded dangerously close to awe. "Do you have any idea what just hit you? The kinetic energy registered on your armor plating was equivalent to a direct hit from a Gauss rifle! A human body cannot produce that kind of force without blowing its own arms off. And the boy... the thermal and electrical output he's generating defies the laws of thermodynamics. They aren't KPA."

 

"Then what are they?" Nomad whispered, keeping his eyes fixed on the two anomalies.

 

"I don't know," Prophet said grimly. "But if they wanted you dead, you'd be a smear on that cliff face. The Nanosuit can only take so much. Disengage. Try to make contact."

 

Nomad let out a slow, stabilizing breath. He took his hand off his sidearm and slowly, deliberately, pushed himself to his feet. His suit hissed as the servos struggled to compensate for the damage, but he stood tall.

 

He reached up to the side of his helmet and depressed the pressure seal. With a hiss of depressurization, he pulled the armored helmet off, revealing the bruised, sweat-soaked face of Jake Dunn.

 

Izuku blinked, slightly surprised to see a normal human face underneath the terrifying visor. Nomad looked to be in his late twenties, with sharp, hardened features and intense blue eyes that scanned them with calculated wariness.

 

"Alright," Nomad said, his voice hoarse, devoid of the robotic modulation. "Truce."

 

Rogue drifted down to the ground, crossing her arms. "Took you long enough, sugar. You always greet strangers by trying to knock 'em out?"

 

"When I'm operating deep behind enemy lines in a hostile warzone, and I see two people tossing military hardware around like toys? Yeah, usually," Nomad replied dryly, tossing his helmet into the crook of his arm. "My callsign is Nomad. United States Special Forces. Who the hell are you two, and how are you doing... that?" He gestured vaguely to Izuku's glowing arms and Rogue's floating feet.

 

"I'm Izuku Midoriya. My hero name is Deku," Izuku said, bowing politely, which seemed to throw Nomad completely off-balance. "And this is Rogue. We... it's a long story, but we aren't from around here. We were caught in a space-time anomaly."

 

Nomad stared at him for a long, silent moment. "A space-time anomaly. You're telling me you're from outer space?"

 

"More like an alternate dimension," Rogue supplied helpfully, leaning against a tree. "One where people have superpowers. We call 'em Quirks, or mutations. We're the good guys, honey. Heroes. We protect people."

 

Nomad rubbed his temples. "Aliens. I'm dealing with interdimensional aliens." He sighed, tapping the comms bead in his ear. "Prophet, tell me you're hearing this."

 

"I hear it," Prophet replied, his voice grave. "And given what your suit just recorded, it's the only logical explanation. Ask them if they know anything about the excavation site."

 

"My CO wants to know if you're involved with the excavation site," Nomad relayed. "Or if you know what the KPA is digging up in the mountain."

 

Izuku and Rogue exchanged a confused glance.

 

"Excavation site? KPA?" Izuku asked. "I'm sorry, Mr. Nomad, we just arrived here maybe twenty minutes ago. We don't know anything about a mountain, or who the KPA are. We just want to find a way home."

 

Before Nomad could answer, a wet, ragged cough echoed through the brush behind them.

 

All three of them spun around, instantly on high alert. Nomad dropped his helmet and drew his sidearm in a flash, while Izuku powered up Full Cowling and Rogue raised her fists.

 

Stumbling out of the dense foliage was a Korean soldier. But he wasn't attacking.

 

He was missing his helmet, and his uniform was shredded. His chest was covered in blood from a massive shrapnel wound—likely collateral damage from the firefight Izuku had escaped earlier, or perhaps he had tripped one of the many booby traps the KPA had set in the jungle. He staggered forward two steps, his eyes glazed and unseeing, before collapsing face-first into the mud with a gurgling gasp.

 

Izuku immediately rushed forward, his heroic instincts overriding his caution. He dropped to his knees beside the dying man, rolling him over. "He's losing a lot of blood! We need to apply pressure!"

 

Nomad walked over, his face impassive. He scanned the soldier with his suit's medical diagnostics. "It's too late, kid. Shrapnel punctured his lung and nicked the pulmonary artery. He's drowning in his own blood. He's got seconds left."

 

The Korean officer gasped, his hands clawing weakly at Izuku's arm, his eyes wide with a mixture of pain and sheer terror. He mumbled something in Korean, blood bubbling past his lips.

 

"He's trying to say something," Izuku said desperately, looking at Nomad. "Can your suit translate?"

 

Nomad shook his head. "Audio is too garbled. He's delirious."

 

Rogue stepped forward, her face completely unreadable. She looked at the dying man, then at Izuku, and finally at Nomad. "I can find out what he knows."

 

Nomad frowned. "How?"

 

"My mutation," Rogue said quietly, peeling off her right leather glove. "If I touch him skin-to-skin, I absorb his memories, his skills, his thoughts. Normally it hurts the person. But he's dying anyway. I can take his recent memories before he goes. We can figure out what's going on here."

 

Izuku looked up at her, conflicted. "Rogue, are you sure? Absorbing someone's mind... it's invasive. And taking on the memories of a dying man..."

 

"We need intel, Deku," Rogue said firmly. "This man knows who the enemy is. He knows what they're doing on this island. If we're going to survive and find a way home, we need that information. And I ain't letting his death go to waste."

 

Nomad watched her, his tactical mind weighing the ethical implications against the strategic value. "Do it."

 

Rogue knelt beside the officer. The man's eyes were already beginning to roll back in his head. She reached out and placed her bare hand firmly against his sweaty, blood-stained forehead.

 

The reaction was instantaneous.

 

Rogue gasped, her eyes flying wide open as the white streaks in her hair seemed to glow for a brief second. Her body went rigid. The KPA officer let out one final, rattling breath, and went entirely limp. His heart stopped.

 

Rogue tore her hand away, falling backward onto the mud, clutching her head as a flood of alien thoughts and memories assaulted her brain. She groaned in pain, squeezing her eyes shut.

 

"Rogue!" Izuku cried, hovering his hands over her, unsure of what to do. "Are you okay?!"

 

"Gimme... gimme a sec," Rogue grunted, her Southern accent slipping slightly, replaced for a moment by the sharp cadence of a Korean dialect. She shook her head violently, forcing the foreign consciousness into the back of her mind, categorizing and assimilating the intel.

 

She opened her eyes. They were wide with shock.

 

"Holy hell," she whispered, looking at Nomad. "You guys are in way over your heads."

 

"What did you see?" Nomad demanded, kneeling beside her.

 

"This is Lingshan Island," Rogue said, her voice shaking slightly as she relayed the dead man's memories. "The KPA—the North Korean military—invaded a week ago. Under the command of a General Kyong. They're holding a team of American archaeologists hostage."

 

"Dr. Rosenthal's team," Nomad confirmed, his eyes narrowing. "That's our primary objective. We're here to rescue them. Where are they?"

 

"They're scattered," Rogue said, rubbing her temples. "But the main dig site... it's in the mountain at the center of the island. Kyong thinks he's found an ancient temple. An endless source of energy. He's using heavy explosives to blast his way into the core."

 

"An ancient temple?" Izuku repeated, confused. "Why would a military general care about an ancient temple enough to risk war with the United States?"

 

Rogue looked at Izuku, and for the first time since they had arrived, she looked genuinely afraid.

 

"Because it ain't a temple, Deku," Rogue said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "The officer... he saw what they pulled out of the ice down there. It isn't human. It isn't Korean or American. It's... it's a machine. But it's alive. And they are waking it up."

 

Before anyone could process her words, the jungle around them went dead silent.

 

The shrieking birds stopped. The droning insects fell quiet.

 

Then, the ground began to vibrate.

 

It started as a low rumble, barely perceptible, before rapidly escalating into a massive, violent earthquake. The colossal trees swayed dangerously, groaning as their ancient roots were tested. Izuku fell to his hands and knees, fighting to keep his balance as the mud beneath them heaved and cracked. Nomad engaged his suit's magnetic boots, anchoring himself to a slab of exposed rock.

 

"Is this a Quirk?!" Izuku yelled over the deafening roar of the earth.

 

"No!" Nomad shouted back, pointing toward the center of the island. "Look!"

 

Through a break in the canopy, they could see the towering peak of the mountain that dominated the center of Lingshan.

 

The peak was fracturing. Massive fissures were ripping across the rock face, and from deep within those cracks, an eerie, pulsing, unnatural blue light was spilling out into the sky. It wasn't the warm light of fire or the crackle of electricity. It was a cold, alien, terrifying luminescence that seemed to suck the heat out of the air.

 

A localized EMP wave, visible as a distortion in the air, blasted outward from the mountain.

 

Nomad's HUD flickered violently, filling with static before rebooting. Izuku felt a strange static charge ripple across his skin, making the hairs on his arms stand up.

 

"Nomad!" Prophet's voice screamed over the radio, heavily distorted by static. "Get out of there! The energy signature is going off the charts! It's not a temple! It's a—!"

 

The radio cut out in a screech of white noise.

 

The mountain roared, and the blue light intensified, painting the sky above Lingshan in the colors of an alien dawn.

 

"Whatever it is," Rogue said, slipping her glove back on and clenching her fists, "I think we just found our way home. Or our graves."

 

Izuku stood up, green lightning flaring to life around his body, casting a defiant emerald glow against the alien blue light. He looked at Nomad, then at Rogue.

 

"Then I guess we're going to the mountain," Izuku said, his voice steel. "Together."

 

The eerie, pulsating blue light from the mountain painted the canopy of the Lingshan jungle in hues of bruised violet and sickly cyan. The natural noises of the island—the squawking of parrots, the chattering of monkeys, the incessant drone of cicadas—had ceased entirely, replaced by a low, rhythmic thrumming that seemed to vibrate not just in the air, but in the marrow of Izuku Midoriya’s bones.

 

"Keep moving," Nomad’s voice crackled, devoid of its mechanical filter now that his visor was raised. He led the way through the dense underbrush, his SCAR rifle held at the low ready. The Nanosuit's synthetic muscles flexed beneath the hexagonal plating, moving with a silent, predatory grace that Izuku found both fascinating and terrifying. "Prophet designated a rally point half a klick north of here. We need to link up before the KPA regroups."

 

Izuku followed closely behind, his boots squelching in the mud. He kept One For All thrumming at a steady five percent, the emerald bio-electricity casting a sharp contrast against the alien blue light bleeding through the leaves. He was hyper-aware of everything: the heat trapping the sweat against his skin, the stinging ache of the bullet graze on his ribs, and the suffocating tension in the air.

 

Rogue brought up the rear. She didn't walk so much as glide, hovering a few inches off the ground to avoid leaving footprints or snapping twigs. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her vintage leather jacket flapping slightly in the humid breeze. Her eyes, however, were entirely focused on the glowing mountain in the distance.

 

"That light ain't natural," she muttered, her Southern drawl thick with unease. "Feels like the time Magneto got his hands on a Shi'ar power core. The air tastes like ozone and copper."

 

"The dead KPA officer said they were digging up a machine," Izuku replied softly, glancing back at her. "Something ancient. If it's a machine, maybe it has a power source we can use to reverse the portal that brought us here."

 

"Let's hope so, kid," Rogue said. "Because if that thing is a weapon, this whole island is gonna turn into a crater."

 

Nomad suddenly raised a clenched fist. The universal military hand signal to halt.

 

Izuku stopped instantly, dropping into a crouch. Rogue descended to the muddy floor, her boots touching down without a sound.

 

"Motion trackers are picking up multiple signatures ahead," Nomad whispered, tapping the side of his helmet. His visor slid down, locking into place with a mechanical hiss, plunging his face back into the featureless, glowing red facade of the Nanosuit. "It's the rendezvous point, but the KPA might have beat us to it."

 

"Negative, Nomad," a deep, commanding voice suddenly rumbled from the thick foliage directly to their right. "It's just me."

 

Izuku jumped, his Danger Sense giving a belated, dull throb. From the shadows of a massive cluster of ferns, the air shimmered and distorted, like heat rising off asphalt. A moment later, the camouflage dropped entirely.

 

Standing before them was another soldier in a Nanosuit, though this one seemed somehow larger, broader, and infinitely more imposing. The armor was identical in design, but the posture of the man wearing it radiated an overwhelming aura of authority and battle-hardened grit. He carried a massive, blocky weapon that Izuku immediately recognized as a Gauss rifle—a magnetic accelerator weapon that shouldn't have been man-portable.

 

"Prophet," Nomad said, lowering his weapon slightly.

 

"Lieutenant," Prophet replied. His visor snapped toward Izuku and Rogue. Even without seeing his eyes, Izuku could feel the weight of his stare. It was analytical, cold, and entirely unforgiving. "And these are the anomalies that blew out your armor plating and defied the laws of physics."

 

"Izuku Midoriya," Izuku said, standing up and bowing slightly, though he kept his guard up. "Pro Hero Deku. And this is Rogue. We... we want to help."

 

Prophet took a slow, heavy step forward. The sheer mass of the man made the mud squelch loudly. "A Pro Hero. What is that? Some kind of Japanese black ops division?"

 

"No," Rogue interjected, stepping in front of Izuku and crossing her arms. She looked Prophet up and down, entirely unimpressed by his intimidating posture. "We're from another universe, tin-man. One where people have abilities. We got sucked through a portal and dumped on this rock. We don't want to fight your war, but we need to get to that mountain to find a way home."

 

Prophet stared at her for a long, agonizing moment. The silence was thick enough to cut with a knife. Finally, he let out a low, synthetic hum.

 

"I monitored Nomad's suit telemetry during your little spar," Prophet said, his voice a low rumble. "You took a point-blank strike from a suit operating at Maximum Speed, and you," he pointed a massive, armored finger at Rogue, "generated enough kinetic force to drain a Nanosuit's armor capacitor in a single blow. If you were KPA, Nomad would be dead, and I'd be calling in an airstrike on this grid."

 

He lowered his hand, gripping his Gauss rifle with both hands.

 

"I don't care about alternate universes. I don't care about 'Pro Heroes' or mutants," Prophet stated, his tone brooking absolute no argument. "What I care about is that this island is crawling with ten thousand North Korean soldiers under the command of a lunatic, and there is something under that mountain that is waking up and throwing out EMP pulses that are blinding the entire US Pacific Fleet."

 

Prophet stepped closer to Izuku, towering over the teenager.

 

"You want to survive? You want to get to that mountain? You follow my orders. This isn't a comic book, kid. This is a warzone. Out here, hesitation gets you killed, and playing nice gets your squadmates put in body bags. If you can't handle that, stay in the jungle and wait for the blast wave. Do we understand each other?"

 

Izuku swallowed hard, staring up at the glowing red visor. The intensity of Prophet's pragmatism was suffocating. It was the exact opposite of everything All Might stood for. But Izuku wasn't stupid; he recognized a survivor when he saw one, and Prophet was the ultimate survivor.

 

"Understood," Izuku said firmly, his green eyes meeting the red visor without flinching.

 

"Good," Prophet grunted. He turned his back on them, looking at Nomad. "We just intercepted a transmission. General Kyong has moved his command center to the deep-water harbor on the eastern coast. He's directing the excavation from there. If we want to know exactly how to breach the mountain's inner structure without bringing the whole thing down on our heads, we need the data from his mainframe."

 

"The eastern harbor is heavily fortified," Nomad noted, pulling up a tactical map on a holographic projection from his wrist. "AA guns, snipers, armored patrol boats, and at least a battalion of KPA infantry."

 

"Which is why we aren't going to sneak in," Prophet said grimly. He looked over his shoulder at Rogue. "You said you wanted to help. How bulletproof are you, exactly?"

 

Rogue smirked, cracking her knuckles. "Try me."

 

Prophet nodded once. "Then we move. Nomad, take point. Cloak and clear."

 

 

 

The march toward the eastern harbor was a grueling exercise in tension.

 

The jungle grew denser, the terrain more treacherous, and the Korean patrols more frequent. Prophet and Nomad moved like ghosts, utilizing their Nanosuit's cloaking capabilities to bypass larger platoons, their footprints melting away into the mud.

 

Izuku and Rogue had to rely on raw skill. Rogue flew above the canopy, acting as an aerial scout, using the thick leaves to mask her presence. Izuku stayed on the ground, utilizing Danger Sense to weave through the patrol routes, leaping silently from branch to branch when the underbrush became too dense.

 

But bypassing wasn't always an option.

 

They were navigating a narrow ravine when they stumbled upon a KPA execution squad.

 

Izuku was perched on a rocky outcropping, hidden by a cluster of ferns, when he saw them below. Six North Korean soldiers were standing over a shallow trench. Kneeling in the mud at the edge of the trench were three civilian hostages—Filipino fishermen, judging by their tattered clothing. They were weeping, their hands bound behind their backs.

 

The KPA squad leader was shouting at them, pointing a pistol at the back of the eldest fisherman's head.

 

No! Izuku’s mind screamed. He engaged Full Cowling, his muscles coiling like springs to leap down and disarm the soldiers.

 

Before he could move, a shimmering blur dropped from the trees directly behind the squad leader.

 

Nomad materialized out of his cloak. He didn't shout a warning. He didn't offer a chance to surrender. In one fluid, brutal motion, Nomad wrapped one arm around the officer's mouth, jerking his head back, while his other hand drove a combat knife cleanly up through the base of the man's skull.

 

The officer didn't even have time to scream. He just went limp.

 

Simultaneously, from the opposite side of the ravine, Prophet opened fire. Not with the Gauss rifle, but with a suppressed SCAR.

 

Phut-phut-phut-phut.

 

Four distinct, barely audible coughs echoed in the ravine. The four remaining KPA soldiers dropped instantly, their skulls violently ruptured by high-velocity, armor-piercing rounds. Blood and brain matter sprayed across the muddy foliage in a gruesome arc.

 

The entire engagement lasted less than two seconds. Five men were dead before the first body hit the floor.

 

Izuku froze. The green lightning around his body sputtered and died.

 

He stared down at the ravine. He saw the pooling blood mingling with the muddy water. He saw the unnatural, broken angles of the soldiers' limbs. He smelled the sudden, sharp, metallic tang of copper and voided bowels rising in the humid air.

 

He felt a wave of profound nausea wash over him. His breath hitched, his chest tightening as if wrapped in iron bands.

 

He had fought villains. He had seen people injured. He had even seen death during the Paranormal Liberation War. But this... this mechanical, clinical, and utterly ruthlessly efficient slaughter... it was entirely different. There was no grand clash of ideals. There was no screaming of Quirks. There was just the cold, hard calculus of military execution.

 

Nomad calmly wiped his knife on the dead officer’s uniform, sheathed it, and moved to cut the bindings off the weeping fishermen, gesturing for them to run into the jungle.

 

Izuku stumbled backward, leaning against the damp rock wall of the ravine, pressing a hand to his mouth as his stomach heaved.

 

A gentle hand gripped his shoulder.

 

Izuku flinched, looking up to see Rogue standing beside him. She had dropped down from the canopy, her face drawn in a mask of solemn empathy.

 

"Deku. Look at me," she said softly.

 

He couldn't. His eyes kept darting back to the bodies below. "They... they just killed them. They didn't even try to knock them out. They just... executed them."

 

Rogue grabbed him by both shoulders, turning him away from the ledge, forcing him to look into her bright green eyes.

 

"Listen to me, Izuku," Rogue said, using his real name, her voice low and steady. "I know this is hard. I know this goes against everything you've ever been taught. You're a hero. You're supposed to save everyone, even the bad guys."

 

"But they're people," Izuku gasped, his voice trembling. "They have families. They're just soldiers following orders."

 

"And if Nomad and Prophet hadn't killed them, those three innocent fishermen would be lying dead in that ditch right now with a bullet in the back of their heads," Rogue countered, her tone firm but not unkind. "This ain't Tokyo, sugar. There are no police to arrest these guys. There's no Tartarus prison to hold them. This is a war."

 

Izuku squeezed his eyes shut, a tear leaking down his dirt-streaked cheek. "I can't... I can't do it, Rogue. I can't kill people."

 

"And nobody is asking you to," Rogue said fiercely, her grip on his shoulders tightening. "I ain't asking you to compromise who you are. I've fought beside mutants who refused to take a life, like Colossus and Nightcrawler. And I've fought beside mutants who bathed in blood to protect us, like Logan. I ain't asking you to be Wolverine, Deku."

 

She reached up, gently wiping the tear from his cheek with her leather-clad thumb.

 

"But you can't freeze," she continued, her eyes burning with an intense, ancient fire that spoke of decades of combat experience. "You can't judge Nomad and Prophet for doing what they have to do to survive and protect the innocent in this world. And you cannot let your hesitation get you, or me, or them, killed. Do you understand?"

 

Izuku took a shaky breath, inhaling the smell of the damp earth and the distant ozone of the mountain. He opened his eyes. The panic was still there, a tight knot in his chest, but it was slowly being overlaid by his ironclad determination to protect.

 

"I won't kill," Izuku said, his voice dropping an octave, finding its strength. "But I won't hold them back, either. I'll be the shield. I'll disarm, I'll distract, I'll incapacitate. I will create openings so they don't have to use lethal force if they don't need to."

 

Rogue smiled, a genuine, proud smile. "That's my boy. You be the best damn Pro Hero this messed-up island has ever seen. Now, take a breath, center yourself, and let's go help GI Joe steal some military secrets."

 

Izuku nodded. He activated One For All, letting the familiar, comforting warmth of the power flood his veins, pushing back the cold dread of the reality around him.

 

They dropped down into the ravine. Nomad and Prophet were waiting. Prophet looked at Izuku, his visor unreadable, but he didn't say a word about the teenager's moment of weakness.

 

"The harbor is two klicks out," Prophet rumbled, turning his back and marching into the brush. "We move loud from here."

 

 

 

The KPA deep-water harbor was a fortress carved out of the tropical coastline.

 

Lying flat on a ridge overlooking the facility, the team surveyed the target. The harbor was a massive concrete basin, sheltering several heavily armed patrol boats and one massive cargo freighter. The perimeter was lined with chain-link fences, sandbag bunkers, and watchtowers housing anti-aircraft flak cannons and snipers. Spotlight beams cut through the growing dusk, scanning the jungle treeline.

 

In the center of the complex was a three-story concrete command building, bristling with communication arrays.

 

"That's the target," Prophet said, pointing a heavily armored finger at the command building. "Kyong's mainframe is on the top floor. We need a hardline connection to download the excavation data."

 

"They've got at least two hundred men down there," Nomad observed, his visor zooming in on the patrols. "Two heavily armored technicals with mounted .50 cals guarding the main gate. Snipers in towers three, four, and seven. It's a meat grinder."

 

"Then we'll just have to break the grinder," Rogue said casually, stretching her arms above her head. She looked at Prophet. "You said you needed a distraction? Something loud?"

 

"The loudest you can manage," Prophet confirmed. "If you pull their fire to the main gate, Nomad and I will infiltrate through the eastern seawall, breach the command building, and secure the data."

 

"What about me?" Izuku asked, his eyes tracking the sniper towers.

 

"You provide overwatch for the mutant," Prophet said bluntly. "Keep the snipers off her back. And try not to get shot."

 

Izuku nodded, his mind already formulating a tactical flowchart. Three sniper towers. Spaced one hundred meters apart. I can use Blackwhip to traverse the distance, but I have to avoid the spotlight arcs. If I engage at twenty percent, I can close the gap faster than their reaction time.

 

"Ready when you are, sugar," Rogue grinned.

 

Prophet and Nomad engaged their cloaking mechanisms, vanishing into thin air, leaving only faint disturbances in the humidity as they moved rapidly down the slope toward the eastern seawall.

 

Rogue looked at Izuku. "Showtime, kid."

 

She didn't sneak down the ridge. She simply bent her knees and jumped.

 

Rogue soared through the air, completely ignoring the cover of the jungle, flying in a high, arcing parabola directly over the main gate. The spotlight beams immediately crossed over her, catching her vintage jacket in stark relief.

 

Air raid sirens began to wail instantly.

 

"적기 출현! 상공에 적기!" (Enemy in the air! Above us!) a KPA soldier screamed over a megaphone.

 

The two armored technicals stationed at the gate swiveled their .50 caliber heavy machine guns upward. The massive weapons opened fire, filling the air with deafening thunder and thick, red tracer rounds.

 

Rogue didn't dodge. She crossed her arms in front of her face and plowed right through the barrage. The anti-materiel rounds, designed to shred light armor, sparked and ricocheted off her skin like hail off a tin roof.

 

She landed directly on the hood of the left technical. The impact crumpled the armored vehicle's engine block instantly, sending the rear wheels flying up into the air. Before the gunner could react, Rogue grabbed the barrel of the .50 cal, ripped it off its mount, and swung it like a bat, knocking the soldier unconscious and sending him flying into a stack of sandbags.

 

"Come and get it, boys!" Rogue yelled, tossing the ruined gun aside and gesturing for the entire base to bring it on.

 

The harbor erupted into chaos. Dozens of KPA soldiers poured out of the barracks, rifles blazing. The anti-aircraft cannons lowered their trajectories, trying to lock onto the woman standing in the center of their courtyard.

 

High on the ridge, Izuku watched the sniper in Tower Three take aim at the back of Rogue's head with a high-powered Dragunov. Even with her invulnerability, a high-caliber sniper round to the back of the skull could give her a serious concussion.

 

Izuku inhaled sharply. Full Cowling: Twenty Percent!

 

He exploded from the ridge, a streak of emerald lightning against the darkening sky. He bounded off a massive palm tree, covering the two hundred meters to Tower Three in a matter of seconds.

 

The sniper barely had time to register the green flash in his peripheral vision before Izuku landed perfectly on the metal railing of the tower.

 

"Sorry about this!" Izuku yelled over the din of the battle.

 

He lashed out with Blackwhip. The dark tendril whipped around the sniper's rifle, tearing it from his grasp and tossing it over the edge. Before the soldier could draw his sidearm, Izuku delivered a lightning-fast, perfectly controlled roundhouse kick to the side of the man's helmet. The soldier slumped backward, out cold.

 

One down. Two to go.

 

Below, Rogue was playing the role of the ultimate tank. She wasn't just surviving the gunfire; she was physically dismantling the KPA's defensive line. She picked up a massive forklift and threw it end-over-end, crushing a platoon of soldiers hiding behind a concrete barricade. She tore the steel doors off a bunker and used them as giant cymbals, deafening and stunning the men inside.

 

But there were too many of them, and they were adapting. A squad of KPA soldiers carrying heavy RPG launchers stepped out of a warehouse, aiming directly at Rogue's back.

 

Izuku saw them from the tower. He couldn't reach them in time.

 

But Nomad could.

 

A sudden, shimmering distortion appeared behind the RPG squad. Nomad de-cloaked, his Nanosuit muscles locked into Maximum Strength. He grabbed two of the soldiers by the backs of their armored vests and hoisted them into the air, smashing their heads together with a sickening crunch. He dropped them, drew his SCAR, and fired a three-round burst into the chest of the third soldier before re-engaging his cloak and vanishing again.

 

Incredible synergy, Izuku thought, awe battling with adrenaline. He's using Rogue's overt aggression to mask his stealth strikes perfectly!

 

Izuku leaped off Tower Three, deploying Blackwhip to swing from a crane towering over the docks. He swung toward Tower Four, dropping down onto the corrugated metal roof. He punched through the thin metal, grabbing the sniper by the collar and hoisting him up, delivering a precise nerve strike to his neck, dropping him safely on the roof.

 

Tower Seven was heavily fortified. The sniper there had realized what was happening and turned his weapon away from Rogue, aiming directly at the green blur swinging through the air.

 

Crack!

 

The sniper round missed Izuku by millimeters, the supersonic crack deafening in his right ear.

 

Izuku couldn't swing in a straight line. He let go of his Blackwhip tether and fell toward the ground, blending into the chaos of the shipping containers below. He navigated the labyrinth of metal crates, using Danger Sense to avoid KPA patrols, sprinting at speeds that left afterimages in the damp air.

 

He reached the base of Tower Seven. The stairs were guarded by four soldiers.

 

Izuku didn't hesitate. He slid across the wet concrete, sweeping the legs of the first two soldiers. As they fell, he unleashed a flurry of Blackwhip tendrils, binding their arms and legs tightly together, essentially cocooning them. He vaulted off their chests, rising into the air, and delivered a double palm strike to the remaining two soldiers, knocking the wind out of them and leaving them gasping on the floor.

 

He bounded up the stairs of the tower in three massive leaps. He burst into the sniper nest just as the soldier was reloading.

 

"Don't move!" Izuku shouted, dropping into a combat stance, electricity crackling wildly around him.

 

The sniper stared at him, terrified by the glowing, lightning-wreathed teenager. He slowly raised his hands, dropping the rifle. Izuku quickly bound him with Blackwhip and tied him securely to the heavy steel support beam of the tower.

 

"All snipers are down!" Izuku yelled into the radio Prophet had given him earlier. "Rogue, how are you holding up?!"

 

"I'm getting bored, sugar!" Rogue's voice crackled cheerfully over the comms, punctuated by the sound of rending metal. "These boys just don't know how to throw a punch!"

 

"Hold your positions," Prophet's deep voice interrupted. "Nomad and I are in the command center. Downloading the data now."

 

From his vantage point in Tower Seven, Izuku had a clear view of the command building. He could see the flashes of muzzle fire through the third-story windows, shadows moving at inhuman speeds as Prophet and Nomad cleared the room.

 

He also had a clear view of the mountain in the distance.

 

The blue light, which had been pulsating steadily, suddenly flared with a blinding, catastrophic intensity. It was as if a miniature sun had ignited within the core of the rock.

 

"Data secured," Nomad reported over the radio. "But we have a problem. We found a live transmission feed from General Kyong. He's at the excavation site. He's rigged the entire outer shell of the alien structure with C4. He's trying to blast the doors open."

 

"Nomad, get down!" Prophet bellowed over the comms.

 

A voice, distorted by a loudspeaker, echoed from a massive radio array on the roof of the command building. It spoke in Korean, but the manic, zealous tone was universally understandable.

 

Izuku didn't need a translator to know what was coming.

 

"Rogue! Brace yourself!" Izuku screamed, dropping One For All and throwing himself flat onto the floor of the sniper nest, wrapping his arms over his head.

 

On the distant peak, the mountain simply ceased to exist.

 

A massive, silent explosion of pulverized rock and dirt erupted outward, followed a microsecond later by a shockwave of pure, unadulterated blue energy. It wasn't a firestorm; it was an expanding dome of absolute, frigid, alien force.

 

The shockwave tore down the mountainside, flattening the jungle like a scythe cutting through wheat. Trees thousands of years old were snapped and vaporized. The sound hit a second later—a deafening, apocalyptic roar that shook the very tectonic plates beneath the island.

 

Izuku felt the tower beneath him groan and buckle as the shockwave hit the harbor.

 

The sheer concussive force tore the metal roof off the tower like tissue paper. Izuku deployed Blackwhip desperately, anchoring himself to the floor as the wind threatened to rip him into the sky. Below, the concrete walls of the harbor shattered. The KPA soldiers who were still standing were thrown into the air, tossed like ragdolls into the churning sea.

 

Rogue was caught in the open courtyard. The shockwave hit her squarely, possessing enough kinetic force to actually lift her invulnerable body off the ground and slam her violently through the side of a steel cargo container.

 

The command building shuddered, its windows blowing out in a hail of lethal shrapnel.

 

The blue energy washed over everything, plunging the world into a blinding, freezing, static-filled whiteout. The air temperature plummeted instantly. The roaring in Izuku's ears reached an agonizing crescendo, and then, slowly, faded into a terrifying, unnatural silence.

 

Izuku slowly lifted his head, his ears ringing, his breath pluming in front of his face in sudden, frosty white clouds.

 

The world had changed.

 

The tropical heat was gone. The harbor, the jungle, the ocean itself... everything within the radius of the blast had been flash-frozen. A thick layer of unnatural, crystalline blue ice covered the concrete, the vehicles, and the bodies of the fallen soldiers. The air was so cold it burned his lungs.

 

And in the distance, standing tall amidst the shattered ruins of the mountain, a colossal, metallic structure was rising from the ice. It hummed with a terrifying, mechanical malice, casting long, freezing shadows over the doomed island.

 

The alien machine was awake. And the true war had just begun.