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This was— and she said this with full knowledge of everything she’d ever done— the stupidest thing she’d ever gotten herself into. No, really, even forgetting the multitude of idiotic decisions she’d done— her people-pleasing tendencies forcing her to continue on with the cursed cry series that had started the downfall of her stability, getting drunk and opening up commissions, her being forced to open up a go-fund me that, to her knowledge, was thirty percent of the way in its goal of three-fucking-thousands pounds, being forced to open a P.O. box, getting dragged into a discord server that she wanted no part of— this took the fucking cake.
How was she to know that this was where it would take her? How was she to know that answering questions random people sent her would snowball into this clusterfuck of a situation? No, really, how was she to know that, like a domino line of bad decision after bad decision, each step inevitably opening the door for another, this would be its final destination?
Let’s rewind.
Papaya was stuck in an alternate universe. Whilst a concept long theorised about, a long held dream of some, even— in the moment she was fuming.
Why, you may ask?
There was a simple, horrifying answer: this was an alternate universe of her own writing.
If it was a universe of any of her other writings, she wouldn’t be so homicidally angry about it. Ecstatic? Of course not—but tolerant, even amused? Yes.
There is a joke amongst authors about what they’d do if they were dropped into a work of their own; what they’d tell their protagonists, what they’d comfort them, how they’d warn them of what’s to come. How their (poor, beaten down upon) protagonists may react upon finding out that they’d been written into place, ultimately figments of someone’s imagination, and nothing more.
Papaya hadn’t really thought about it in the context of her fanfictions; mainly because a) she was too tired from working her two jobs, and the busy wrangling of her tumblr page and recently, the discord server, and b) she couldn’t be bothered. If at any point, she had thought about isekai-ing into a fic of her choosing, she’d have picked perhaps one of the batman ones; or if forced to choose another, she’d pick her favourite BNHA series that she’d written, Solatium.
The irony of the situation didn’t escape her— her most hated fanfiction, the one she most ardently tried to forget about, begging and begging her followers— emotionally manipulative, feral enablers they were— to let the story die a peaceful, quiet death, only for a single moment of drunkenness to set her back years.
(did it do anything for her that she had morals and was able to be guilted so easily? No, of course not; all it did was force her to stick to her guns, grit her teeth and continue to write.
but still. She could, and would, dump the blame somewhere and she would place it squarely on her younger self.)
She’d gone to sleep after her shift at work; after checking on the clusterfuck that was the discord server, and then answering a few of her tumblr asks, she’d gone to bed, intent on catching up on her sleep debt and getting enough sleep so as to wake up early enough to not have to rush to work.
She hadn’t woken up in her bed, nor in the flat that she shared. Her bed, she could excuse— despite the two blankets she went to sleep with, she was prone to sleepwalking, and so, wasn’t extremely unusual. Her flat, however?
Not waking up in her flat was terrifying: finding herself in a weird alleyway was worse.
She had a moment of blind panic— alright, maybe more than a moment— before she forcibly calmed down. She was twenty, going on twenty-one! She could deal with whatever this was, whatever scheme or prank this was. She had a job— two jobs even— and yeah, OK, maybe she didn’t have a car, but that was more for financial reasons than anything else.
(the new learner insurance rates and the sheer terror of roundabouts was not a good trade off for driving in a metal hunk of a deathtrap, especially when everything was within walking distance.)
She patted herself down, her first thought to unlock her phone and figure out where the hell she was before calling a friend. And with the thought of her phone, came the immediate apprehension of having to call her manager, because looking up at the blue sky, the horizon didn’t look like the dark, cloudy skies of an early England morning— meaning she was horrifically late.
She was in the clothes she’d been sleeping in last night, but curiously, she was wearing one of the two pairs of shoes that she had in her arsenal; the boots to be precise. Further to that, she was wearing a well-worn cardigan of hers, her overall attire looking to be a hodgepodge of comfy sleepwear and the low-effort clothing she’d wear when she'd pop over to the corner shop.
Unable to find her phone, she hissed through her teeth. “Fuck,” she muttered to herself, before repeating louder, “Fuck, fuck, shit, goddamn it all. Why is this happening to me?”
She glared at the sky above her, its cloudless expanse taunting her with its cheerful summer-like brightness. After a minute— maybe two, maybe five, maybe even an hour— of pitying herself, she forced herself to move out of the alleyway.
It wasn’t even for a sufficiently heroic reason that she could lie to herself about, some sort of bullshit about it being better to face the day and its unknowns; it just stank.
And that was when her second shock of the day came about; walking out of the alleyway forced her into a bustling crowd with the most colourful people she’d ever seen. And look, she didn’t mean colourful as in tattoos or clothes or partially dyed hair. She meant colourful like some of these people were bright blue, somebody’s hair was the most garish shade of orange she’d ever seen, and she didn’t know if her eyesight was failing her, but she could’ve sworn she saw someone with a tail.
She was completely and utterly baffled; maybe there was a cosplay event she hadn’t been aware of?
“What the hell?” She said to herself. “Am I fucking drunk? Is this what happens when you don’t sleep properly for a day?”
She couldn’t even take a minute to re-orientate herself, to assimilate herself of the sensory overload that was sound and colour and outfits and chaos due to the hustle and bustle, the throng that she was now in the middle of.
And thanks to being in the middle of a hoard, she could hear snatches of conversation around her, a hubbub of sound in a language that she was not familiar with.
“そして私は彼に言いました—”
“ヒーローズ・エージェンシーはもっとよく知っているはずだ—”
“ヴィランの—”
It took her longer than she’d like to admit to anyone who’d ever ask that they were speaking Japanese— and longer still to realise that she was in Japan.
(look. You couldn’t blame her, OK? Despite the stereotypes, dreary old England was actually in fact, a hotspot of different cultures and languages and she didn’t want to assume, alright? And yes, having woken up in an alleyway— because, no she wasn’t over that— added to her confusion, and so, it wasn’t entirely her fault, now was it? Add to it the fact that she was quite unobservant even when she wasn’t overstimulated like this, well—
point was, she hadn’t realised until she’d been able to fight her way out of the crowd, seeing a street sign in kanji, the pieces falling into place.)
Of course, she still hadn’t put the puzzle together at that point. For one, it was a preposterous idea. For another, it was so far out of left field, it wouldn’t have even occurred to her to even think of being in an alternate universe.
There were a hundred and one more reasonable explanations, and sure she didn’t know what they were, but she could think some up, right?
Her hand automatically reached for her phone, innate muscle memory to try to figure out where she was, before she remembered she’d woken up here without it. Fuck. There was a complication she didn’t want to think about.
She dithered in place for a moment, before she mentally shrugged and picked a direction to walk in. How hard could it be to find a police station around here?
Two hours. That’s how long it took for her to find the goddamned place, wandering aimlessly, doubling back twice, and finally stumbling across it, her feet aching by the time she found it.
Those two hours had been some of the worst of her life; confusion, a language barrier, and panic threatening to claw up her throat being mixed together, made it hard to think straight.
Add to that the disturbance at the one hour and thirty mark when a group of people began screaming and running away from a burning building on fire… there was a nagging voice at the back of her head that she was adamantly ignoring, trying not to connect the dots.
Sure, she was an author, and with that came an overactive imagination. Sure, she was a little stressed out, working six days a week, calling estate agents to figure out if it was even possible to buy an apartment through a go-fund me, the hanging threat of her followers throwing money and gifts to her dangling like a damocles sword.
And yes, she could finally admit to herself that the man who she’d seen briefly in her walk really was floating off the ground. And maybe she could concede that the woman who was burping bubbles wasn’t a result of her bone-deep exhaustion. And there was the slightest chance that the three kids running in the park, one with the head of a crocodile, the other two with a bat’s wings and a robin’s tail respectively— well, that she wasn’t hallucinating.
But there had to be a reasonable explanation for it. Maybe she was having a mental breakdown, consumed by work and financial stress, trying to keep herself afloat. There was even the possibility of this being a fever dream, having fallen sick the night before; but these excuses— and that’s what they were, Papaya wasn’t afraid to admit it— fell flat in her own mind. It was only the sheer chaos of her regular life that kept her from curling up on the nearest bench, and delving into a full-blown panic attack.
It didn’t matter. She’d made it to the police station, and looking up at it, a tall, severe building, nothing like the brick and old fashioned building she’d seen around in her home city, she felt a shiver of— something up her spine.
(she told herself it was relief. she knew it wasn’t.)
She took a deep breath in, hummed a few lyrics of her favourite song—Lush Life by Zara Larsson—before she went in.
“Hello?” She called, before remembering that she was in Japan. “Uh, こんにちは？”
A woman who was sitting in the receptionist's seat, tall and willowy, age shown in the silver of her hair and pronounced wrinkles, beckoned her in. She gave Papaya a brisk once-over, taking in the clothes she’d slept in last night, the oversized, overworn cardigan, the boots that had nothing to do with the outfit— and frowned.
“You doin’ alright love?” She asked, a distinct northern English accent— York or Scouse, Papaya couldn’t be sure of. “You’re looking a bit peaky there, bab,” she continued when Papaya hadn’t said anything, too busy gaping at her, relief finally, finally flooding her veins.
“Yes—yes, sorry! I was just surprised, is all,” she hurried to explain, excitement bubbling up, barely concealed delight adding pitch to her voice.
The concern faded a little from the receptionist’s face, replaced by understanding. “It’s my quirk, you see,” she explained. “Anything I say’s translated to you in your native language, and I can hear anything you’re saying in my native language. Neat, eh?”
She hurried to nod even as her words confirmed her worst fears. The receptionist seemed to see the joy abruptly fall from her face, because she changed the subject.
“Right, what’s bothering you today, eh? You look a bit worse for the wear, and young’uns like you should be at work or at school.”
“Um.” She floundered. She couldn’t blurt out the first thing that came to mind— namely that this wasn’t real, and she was clearly hallucinating or having a bad trip or completely blacked out, if only because she didn’t want to disappoint the lady that seemed so sweet, and reminded her of the dinner ladies she had had at Primary School— so she said the second thing on her mind.
Which was, incidentally, the truth.
“I woke up in an alleyway a couple of hours ago, and I have no idea how I got there. And, um, I’m supposed to be in England, and from what I could tell I’m in Japan, so…”
“Hmm,” the receptionist— and really, she should’ve asked for her name by now, but at this point, it was too awkward— hummed, before typing on the keyboard, looking back at her once or twice with that same critical eye.
“Take a seat, lovey, and someone will be with you soon.”
She sat. It was an incredibly awkward experience, being the only one there at— she checked the time— 11:37AM with only the receptionist typing in the background, and no phone to distract her.
Forty excruciating minutes later, she was called into the inner station.
“So.” The detective started. Fuck, what was his name? She knew not actually watching Boku No Hero Academia would bite her in the ass, and apparently the universe decided it would fuck her over in the not only worst, but also most bizarre way ever.
“I am the most competent here at speaking English, aside from our lovely Madame Ketsuke that you just met,” he began, but she was distracted by the second policeman in the room. It was fucking weird looking at a cat’s head and seeing that the rest of his body was a man. Weirder still to know how a 2D character that she’d seen in the wiki-page translated into real life.
She dragged her eyes away from him to look at the man sitting in front of her. Look— she was tired, she was hungry, she didn’t know what had happened, and she had confirmation in the form of the receptionist’s words that she was in what she had previously known as a fictional world. She wasn’t having a good time. Is it any wonder, then, that Papaya decided to lay out all her cards on the table? Decided to take that leap, and embrace whatever was going on? Try to make things easier for herself? She didn’t care if they thought she was insane— at this point, she was thinking that herself.
“I’m in an alternate universe. And—I know! I know it sounds insane!” She blurted out before her newfound bravery— or was it desperation?— left her. She lifted her hands, preemptively stalling off their protests, “But I can prove it!”
She could hear the detective in the back scoff, a quiet, disbelieving chuff. But the human one, in front of her— he was looking at her in a clear challenge, and she knew she had him. If she was right— and god, she hoped she was, this detective was the one who was able to detect lies.
“Alright,” he said slowly. “Prove it.”
She gulped, the sound loud in the quiet room.
His brown orbs were trained on hers. This was the one and only chance she’d get, and it was a make or break moment.
“OK,” she muttered to herself, before saying in a louder voice, “I don’t know if you’ll want your colleague to hear about this,” she said in an effort to show some responsibility.
“Why? Afraid that we’ll laugh you out of here?” the cat-headed one asked, coming over and looming far too close to comfort. The first detective— and why hadn’t he introduced himself, it felt so awkward to refer to them as the cat and the human in her mind— smiled placidly at her when she looked at him askance.
“It’s alright,” he said, and she knew that he was humouring her; he probably thought that she was a conspiracy nut or that she had been hit by a quirk.
He didn’t believe her.
She didn’t know why she felt so disappointed, but she shoved the feeling away. It was clear that they were doing the good cop, bad cop routine, and she wasn’t going to take any part of it.
Fine. It was a closely guarded secret she knew, but at this point she couldn’t care less.
“I know All-Might’s civilian identity,” she started and watched in satisfaction the shock and the faint horror on the detective’s face. “Not only that, I also know the secret of his quirk.” She paused for a dramatic beat, savouring the flash of fear in his face, the sharp inhale he halfway aborted. “And if you don’t want me shouting it out to the world, then you’ll be taking me home.”
He blanched, and she could feel her stomach sinking. Fuck, was that too much? It didn’t matter, she couldn’t back down now. She decided to do the next best thing— which in this case was doubling down on her bullshit— and leaned into the charade of being a low-grade villain.
“I suggest letting your subordinate go, and hearing me out.” She intoned, low and menacing, leaning back in the chair like it was a throne, and she was a queen. Her heart was hammering, anxiety crawling up her throat, but she didn’t let that stop her. She had people waiting for her, and although she didn’t want to admit it— her paplings were a good majority of them.
He stood up shakily, ushering the cat detective out. Said detective protested, twisting and staring at her in such bewilderment that it took all she could not to laugh.
When he came back— twenty minutes later, she wondered how he’d been able to explain this to the other detective— he got straight to business. “Look, Miss…” he began, fishing again for a name. When she didn't give it to him, he sighed, before continuing. “You say that you have information on All-Might, and whilst I don’t necessarily believe you on your being in an alternative universe,” he talked over her when she tried to protest, “I do believe that you have significant information pertaining to our national hero.”
He sighed, tired and fraying at the edges. She almost felt sorry for him, before she remembered exactly what predicament she was in. “Now, we can do this the easy way, or we can treat you like a villain, in which case we’ll have to detain you on suspicion of espionage.”
He paused for a moment, staring into her soul, a piss-poor attempt at trying to intimidate her. Ha! Well good luck with that—A-Levels had scooped out all fear she could possibly feel and replaced it with detached apathy. “Which will it be?”
She groaned however, as the full scope of the situation seemed to hit her all at once; she was stubborn— but even she could see that she wouldn’t be able to find her way out of this without the help of someone competent. She inhaled sharply, gathering her courage, and squared her shoulders before she pulled out her last and most unorthadox card: “I want Nezu.”
He looked a mixture of defeated and confused, and she felt vaguely vindicated in her pettiness.